UMA Lab Principal Investigator
Sharda Umanath is an associate professor of psychology at Claremont McKenna College and the director of CMC’s Memory and Aging Lab (UMA Lab). She earned her Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Duke University and did her postdoctoral work at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research focuses on how knowledge works in memory and explores related issues involving cognitive aging, autobiographical memory, collective memory, false memories, and education. She fell in love with the field of memory as an undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis through her philosophy-neuroscience-psychology major. She was named an APS Rising Star in 2018 and recently received an Honorable Mention for the 2023 J. Don Read Early Career Award from the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition (SARMAC). She was also awarded the Psychonomic Society’s 2023 Early Career Award as well as the Mentorship Award in Aging from the American Psychological Association’s Division 20 - Adult Development and Aging. Her currently ongoing project entitled “Stabilizing Accessibility of Prior Knowledge Across the Lifespan” is funded by the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program and a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) supplement. She has also received funding for other projects through the James S. McDonnell Foundation, the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, the CMC Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies, and the CMC Lowe Institute of Political Economy. Outside the lab and classroom, Sharda spends her time painting, reading sci-fi/fantasy, playing overly complex board games, traveling, and hiking.
Lab Members
Jason Bao is a senior at CMC from Vancouver, Canada, majoring in Psychology, Philosophy, and Data Science. Within the lab, Jason has worked on various projects, from stabilizing access to prior knowledge to analyzing memory distortion in repeated recall. In the coming years, he hopes to apply everything he has learned to his own topic of interest: how narrative structures the recall and organization our autobiographical memories. Outside the lab, he enjoys exploring internet subcultures, (hopefully) hiking around Claremont, and cooking food now with his cat, Yosora.
Ishya Bhavsar is a sophomore at Pomona College from Prairie Village, Kansas, and is interested in psychology and neuroscience. She is excited to learn more about how memory works and conduct formal research. Outside of the lab, Ishya plays tennis for Pomona-Pitzer and loves beach days.
Madry Breazeale is a senior at CMC from Minneapolis, Minnesota, majoring in economics and psychology. In taking Dr. Umanath’s Effective Learning Across Life class, she became particularly interested in understanding healthy aging and is excited to transfer this knowledge to the real world by working with participants and forming intergenerational connections. Outside of the lab, Madry swims for the CMS Swim & Dive team and enjoys any outdoor activity from hiking to camping. She also loves spending time with friends and family and embraces any opportunity to create art or find new music.
Stella Guy Warren is a senior psychology major at Pitzer College from Carbondale, Colorado. She originally became interested in how memory is stored and retrieved in Dr. Umanath’s Cognitive Psychology class and is excited to connect this work to her own interest in early education. Outside of the lab, you can find Stella in the Outdoor Education Center, exploring public lands around California, and trying new creative hobbies (currently printmaking!)
Lilly Hunter is a senior at Pitzer College from Mill Valley, California, majoring in Psychology and Dance. Her primary interests in psychology are oriented around aging in humans and cognitive degeneration. She discovered this interest through learning from older people around her, furthered it through a Study of Lives course at Pitzer, and later a summer working with dementia patients in Claremont. Outside of the lab, she loves surfing, rock climbing, spending time with friends, listening to and playing music, and doing all things outside.
Sam Parupudi is a sophomore at Claremont McKenna College majoring in International Relations and Economics. Joining the UMA Lab, she is excited to research collective memory and how historical narratives shape national identity. Outside of the lab, Sam enjoys hiking, working on carpentry projects, and, more recently, experimenting with new recipes in the kitchen.
Lab Alumni
May McCollum joined the UMA Lab as a lab manager from 2024-2026. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology at Colorado State University, studying under Dr. Vanessa Loaiza, where she is building upon her experience acquired in the UMA Lab to further investigate how prior knowledge can compensate for age-related working memory declines.
Julie Chen (2026) graduated from Scripps College with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology with a Data Science minor. She is currently a 6th grade math teacher in Boston and is pursuing a master’s in Educational Policy at BU.
Wendy Zhang (2026) graduated as a Cognitive Science major and Data Science and Linguistics minors from Pomona College. She is now a graduate student in the Computational Memory Lab at Vanderbilt University working with Sean Polyn, where she studies the temporal effects of working memory and episodic memory.
Jackson Cate joined the UMA Lab as a Fulbright Graduate Research Fellow from 2024-2025. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. at The University of Waikato studying with Dr. Maryanne Garry.
Eleanor Farry (Pomona 2025) is the current Lab Manager of the Social Cognitive and Neural Sciences Lab at Columbia University researching person perception and social vision.
Claire Hou (2024) graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Psychological Science and a Data Science sequence.
Lexi Lee (2024) graduated from CMC as a Neuroscience major with honors. She is now a medical student at University of Minnesota Medical School.
Elyse Shan (2024) graduated from Scripps College with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology with a Spanish minor. She is currently doing a masters in Speech-Language Pathology at Vanderbilt University.
Aichatou Diaw (2024) graduated from Claremont McKenna college and is currently a UX Research Fellow for a startup company called LePal.ai.
Kara Hoover joined the Memory and Aging Lab as a lab manager after graduating from UCLA in 2019 with her bachelor’s in psychology. Kara is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology at UCLA and hopes to use what she has learned in the UMA Lab to conduct research that will aid the aging population.
Madison McCue (2023) graduated as a Psychological Science major in 2023 and is currently a graduate student in a PsyD program for School Psychology at the University of Colorado Denver.
Joanna Hwang (2022) graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Psychological Science and a sequence in Leadership. She is currently working as an Operations Specialist at Pima Council on Aging. There, she assists with optimizing project workflows and maintains a resource directory to help older adults in need find local resources.
Dana Harris (2022) graduated with her bachelor’s in Computer Science and has been working as a software engineer at Proofpoint for the past two years. There, she builds cyber defense systems that scan and protect corporate emails from malicious threats such as phish, spam, and malware.
Megan Itagaki (Scripps 2022) graduated with her bachelor’s in psychology. In May 2023, she received her master’s in Human Development and Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She currently works as a social-emotional curriculum specialist at a non-profit in Chicago.
Emily Langston (Scripps 2022) is currently attending the University of Michigan Law School.
Maddie Valdez (2021) graduated from Claremont McKenna College as a neuroscience major with a focus in cognition. After graduating, she spent two years as a lab manager in the Cognition, Aging, and Brain Imaging Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Psychological and Brain Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. She works alongside Dr. Julie Bugg in the Cognitive Control and Aging Lab where she investigates the cognitive control mechanisms that support prospective memory and how these mechanisms change with age.
Su Young Choi (December 2020) graduated as a double major in psychology and economics. He is now a Ph.D. student in Social Psychology at the University of Southern California, working with Dr. Daphna Oyserman.
Jessica Selig (2020) graduated as a dual major in psychology and economics. She works as a clinical research associate for the Pfizer Innovations Research Lab in digital medicine working on using wearable devices to better understand the patient experience.
Sarah Tritschler (2020) graduated as a psychology major with a sequence in Data Science. She is a healthcare consultant for Cloudmed Consulting Group in San Francisco.
Kathrine Whitman (2019) joined the UMA Lab as a lab manager from 2022-2024. She is pursuing her Ph.D. at Stanford University as a Knight Hennessy Scholar, where she utilizes the knowledge she gained in the UMA Lab to examine the cognitive and psychological strengths of aging, as well as societal implications for increased longevity.
CC Schwab (2019) graduated as a dual major in economics and psychology. She now works at AArete as a management consultant with a healthcare focus. This involves helping clients with claims analytics, contract management, regulatory compliance, systems integration, and process improvement.
Alicia Tsai (2019) graduated as a dual major in biology and psychology. She now works remotely as a user delight specialist for Matter, a reading tech startup based in San Francisco. She is also a freelance photographer and photographs weddings, sports, families, and more! (She even photographed Professor Umanath’s wedding ceremony.)
Audrey Siqi-Liu (2018) graduated from CMC as a dual major in Psychology and Literature. She completed her Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience at Duke University (2023) and a postdoctoral research position in the Visual Cognition Lab with Stephen Mitroff and Dwight Kravitz at George Washington University. She is now Associate Director of Data Science at Merck Research Laboratories, where she supports global oncology treatment and care.
Juan (Johnny) Castillo (2018) graduated from CMC with a dual major in Neuroscience and Psychology. After completing an Intramural Research Training Award Fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, he earned a Ph.D. in psychology with a secondary field in data science from Harvard University, working with Dr. Elizabeth Phelps. During his Ph.D., he also worked as a data scientist at Enterra Solutions and as an AIUX researcher at Google DeepMind. He now leads the AIUX research program at Distyl, a series B AI unicorn.
Lauren Clubb (2018) graduated with a BA in Biochemistry from CMC. Following graduation, she completed a two-year NIH IRTA Post-Bac fellowship with Dr. Paul Love, studying thymic immune cell development. In 2020 she joined the Biomedical Sciences PhD program at UCSD where she is now a PhD candidate co-advised by Drs. Silvio Gutkind and Jill Mesirov. She is currently studying the role of G protein coupled receptors in anti-tumor immunity.
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Grant Gilchrist (2018) graduated as an economics major. He works as a knowledge analyst at Russell Reynolds Associates in Boston, Massachusetts, working with a team of executive recruitment professionals to research market trends and identify top-tier talent.
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Audrey Siqi-Liu (2018) graduated as a dual major in Psychology and Literature. She completed her Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University in May 2023 and is now working as a postdoctoral associate in the Visual Cognition Lab with Stephen Mitroff and Dwight Kravitz at George Washington University.
Francois Ries (2018) graduated as an economics and engineering major from CMC before transferring to Columbia University to complete a bachelor’s in Operation Research. He works as a business analyst at McKinsey & Company in Switzerland.
Other former lab members
Ryan Burnell
Alexandra Carter
Sara Cawley
Allie Crum
Samantha Kinder
Bella Milano
Ragini Mohan
Jay Renaker
Izzy Sakoda
Richa Shah
Isabel Streiffer
Rachel Supnick
Hannah Tien
Ethan Tom
Meilan Uyeno
Daniel Wu
Main Collaborators
Magdalena Abel, University of Technology Nuremberg
Dorthe Berntsen, University of Aarhus
Andrew C. Butler, Washington University in St. Louis
Jen Coane, Colby College
Samantha A. Deffler, York College of Pennsylvania
Maryanne Garry, University of Waikato
Mark J. Huff, University of Southern Mississippi
Elizabeth J. Marsh, Duke University
Mark A. McDaniel, Washington University in St. Louis
Henry L. Roediger III, Washington University in St. Louis
David C. Rubin, Duke University