The calendar for the Department of Cognitive and Psychological Sciences is always packed with events during the spring semester, but 2026 is particularly notable for the remarkable number of doctoral students who will be defending their dissertations this term, on topics ranging from canine cognition to pedestrian behavior.
There will be eleven PhD students defending, representing a bigger graduating class than CoPsy has had since before the coronavirus pandemic.
From start to finish:
As this cohort of doctoral students approach the end of their studies at Brown, perhaps it is not surprising that they are reflecting on the experiences that shaped their time in the CoPsy Department.
Some, like Anthony Bruno, came directly from their undergraduate programs. Others, including Alice Xia, served as lab managers before coming to their PhD.
Xia advised, “The hidden curriculum, which I only now know in retrospect, is that it’s most critical to get as much hands-on research experience as possible, and not necessarily to stack up degrees. My journey here has been long and circuitous, full of many stretches of imposter syndrome, but ultimately (and luckily), the force that won out and continues to drive me is my deep curiosity for understanding the mind and brain.”
Within the CoPsy community:
The doctoral experience in CoPsy can take many forms, and students have found varied kinds of meaning and connections during their time in the program.
“One of my favorite things about having come to CoPsy is just the ability that I've had to work with people who come from completely different backgrounds than I do,” Madeline Pelgrim shared. “I've worked closely with faculty, with graduate students, and I've learned a lot about a lot of stuff. And it's been really informative and I think is something that was really only possible with the really lovely composition of the department that we have, but also the size of the department. It's been feasible to get to know what other people are working on and what they're up to and get inspired and get ideas from them.”
Pelgrim has studied under advisor Daphna Buchsbaum since her undergrad at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation is on human-dog visual interactions, particularly learning, gesturing, and collaboration.
Alice Xia, who has been pursuing research into the formation of social cognitive maps with Oriel FeldmanHall, stated, “CoPsy has been home for a while now, so I feel very comfortable here and I enjoy being part of this community. No science family is perfect but this one has undoubtedly supported me in countless ways and I’ll always be grateful for that. Something unexpected that I learned over the years is just how human the scientific enterprise really is.”
Kei Yoshida echoed, “The best thing about the department has to be the people. I started my PhD journey in 2020, so my first year experience was very different. I moved to Providence in 2020 but then stayed at home for most of the time. I didn't meet a lot of people. But once [there] started becoming in-person activities, I just got to know a lot more people and since then the department has become much more connected.”
In addition to Yoshida’s research—studying pedestrian behavior using network analysis and simulations with an agent-based model—she also highlighted the importance of meeting other researchers as a part of being a graduate student. She emphasized the opportunity to attend conferences, including one where she met her soon-to-be postdoc advisor.
Access in academia:
What it means to be in academia and to pursue a PhD in 2026 has also been a question for these students to ponder as their defenses approach. “There are these ingrained ideas of professors in ivory towers that make academia seem unreachable or even disproportionately revered” Xia reflected. “In that way, the years I’ve spent here have been very unexpectedly helpful in breaking down some of the conceptual barriers I had about what it means to be a scientist in general.”
Anthony Bruno is exploring time perception through the integration of auditory, visual, and motion-based cues. His experiences reinforced Xia’s reflection: “I'm a first generation college student and I have to remind myself that I'm at Brown, going to job talks or hosting seminars. It's easy to take for granted the kind of intellectual conversations and cool science that happen here. When going to defenses in my first and second year here, I got to see what the rituals and the processes were like. It gave me this feeling of 'Wow, I really get to be in the room where these things happen.’”
Beyond their research, many defending students have accrued extensive teaching experience as TAs for courses in the College, often for perennial department requirements such as CPSY 1900 (Research Methods). But the opportunities to serve the academic community don’t stop there. For example, Bruno also works with the Sheridan Center and serves on the Teaching subcommittee of DEI at CoPsy, while Pelgrim has taught at the Brown Pre-College Program for three years.
As for opportunities after leaving Brown, some of these students have already lined up future opportunities including postdoctoral positions in Europe and teaching at colleges. Whatever they do, they will be taking the research and teaching experiences they have had into this new chapter.