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
Lab Manager
May McCollum joined the Umanath Memory and Aging Lab as Lab Manager in Fall 2024. She graduated from UC Riverside with a B.S. in Neuroscience in 2024 after completing her honors thesis with the LANI Lab. She is especially interested in researching the nuances of age-related changes in memory and cognition, and how to best promote healthy cognitive aging. Outside of the lab, she enjoys reading, baking, and crafts.
Jason Bao is a junior at CMC from Vancouver, Canada, majoring in Psychology, Philosophy, and Data Science. Within the lab, Jason has been working on various studies, from stabilizing access to prior knowledge via learning strategies to analyzing autobiographical memory content to predict home purchases. Through these projects, Jason is grateful to have gained invaluable experience in every stage of the research cycle. In the coming years, he hopes to apply everything he has learned to his own topic of interest: the intersection of narrative and memory. Outside the lab, he enjoys exploring internet subcultures, (hopefully) hiking around Claremont, and cooking more Asian food now with his new cat.
Sara Cawley is a junior at Scripps College from Chicago, Illinois, majoring in data science with a minor in psychology. She became interested in research with older adults after volunteering at a senior center in Claremont during a Clinical Geropsychology class. Outside the lab, she enjoys hiking, swimming, and trying new coffee shops.
Julie Chen is a senior at Scripps College from Arcadia, California, majoring in Psychology and minoring in Data Science. She is particularly interested in how memory changes across the lifespan and how depth of encoding upon exposure affects retrieval. Outside of the lab, she enjoys doing escape rooms and playing with her pets (two cats and one dog!). She is also an avid fan of roller coasters, mental math, and collecting unique playing cards.
Ragini Mohan is a junior at CMC from Mumbai, India, and she plans to dual major in Economics and Psychological Science. She was inspired to work in the UMA Lab after taking Professor Umanath’s Cognitive Psychology class. She believes this opportunity will combine her love for working with older adults with her desire to learn and explore how formal research is conducted in a lab. Outside the lab, Ragini plays the piano, is part of the Smart Women Securities Club, and enjoys karaoke.
Meilan Uyeno is a junior at CMC from Bellevue, Washington, majoring in Biology & Psychology. She enjoys working with older adults, and she took Dr. Umanath’s Cognitive Psychology class during the fall of her freshman year. She is interested in studying cognitive aging and exploring strategies to reduce age-related declines in memory and information retention. Outside of the lab, Meilan dives for the CMS swim & dive team, plays piano, and loves to adventure outdoors with her friends!
Wendy Zhang is a senior at Pomona College from Beijing, China. She is majoring in Cognitive Science and minoring in Linguistics and Data Science. She is interested in how cognitive aging impacts memory and memory transformation. Outside of the lab, she enjoys playing tennis, hiking, and watching movies.
Lab Alumni
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.
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.
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.
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.)
Juan (Johnny) Castillo (2018) graduated from CMC as a dual major in Neuroscience and Psychology. After graduation, he completed a two-year Intramural Research Training Award fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, investigating how nicotine addiction dysregulates cognitive control alongside Dr. Elliot Stein. He is now a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University in Psychology working with Dr. Elizabeth Phelps to characterize how fear affects memory, self-reflection, decision-making, and emotional wellbeing. He is also completing a secondary field in Data Science at Harvard, and concurrently worked as a Data Scientist at Enterra Solutions, and more recently an AI UX Researcher at Google DeepMind.
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
Allie Crum
Samantha Kinder
Bella Milano
Jay Renaker
Izzy Sakoda
Richa Shah
Isabel Streiffer
Rachel Supnick
Hannah Tien
Ethan Tom
Daniel Wu
Main Collaborators
Magdalena Abel, University of Regensburg
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