Team

Jorge Morales

Jorge Morales

Duke Blue Devils Lab Director

Jorge is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and of Psychology and Neuroscience. He directs the Subjectivity Lab, housed in the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. He's interested in conscious experiences and how we know them. His research focuses on vision, mental imagery, and introspection/metacognition to study the subjective character of the mind. To do this, he employs an interdisciplinary approach that integrates tools from psychology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence and philosophy. Before joining Duke, Jorge was an assistant professor at Northeastern University following a postdoctoral fellowship in the Psychological and Brain Sciences Department at Johns Hopkins University. Despite leading a lab, Jorge somehow only has (5!) degrees in philosophy. He earned a philosophy Ph.D. from Columbia University (who somewhat gratuitously also gave him an M.A. and an M.Phil.). While working on his doctorate, he trained in a Cognitive Neuroscience lab. Way before all this, he was born and raised in Mexico City, where he obtained an MA at Mexico's National University (UNAM) and a BA from Universidad Panamericana (you guessed right: both were in philosophy). Jorge loves good coffee, art, and (mostly ancient) history.

Michaela Klímová

Michaela Klímová

Duke Blue Devils Post-doctoral Researcher

Michaela is a postdoctoral researcher at Duke University, interested in how the visual system transforms the basic building blocks of vision into complex representations. She completed her PhD at Boston University with Sam Ling, where she used fMRI to study how spatial context shapes processing in early visual cortex. Prior to joining The Subjectivity Lab, she worked with MiYoung Kwon at Northeastern, investigating how dim viewing conditions affect visual performance and spatial integration in the visual cortex. Michaela holds a BSc and MSc in Psychology from the University of Edinburgh, where she first developed an interest in consciousness research. Before focusing on visual neuroscience in her PhD, she worked as a predoctoral research assistant at the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science. Outside of research, Michaela enjoys running, yoga, cooking, and reading.

Xueyi Huang

Xueyi Huang

Northeastern University Graduate Student

Xueyi is a PhD student in the Department of Psychology at Northeastern University. She is interested in mental representations, perception, and imagery, and in how the external world constructs our inner minds. During her undergraduate research, she compared the attentional biases from items embedded in visual imagery and visual working memory, and she explored whether visual imagery and visual working memory share the same representational system. Xueyi was born and raised in Shanghai and obtained her B.S. from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China. In her spare time, she enjoys exploring Boston, watching movies and tennis games, and playing ping pong.

Michael McPhee

Michael McPhee

Northeastern University Graduate Student

Michael McPhee is a PhD student in the Department of Psychology at Northeastern University. His research focuses on consciousness, perception and metacognition, and uses psychophysics, pupillometry and neuroimaging to investigate conscious awareness in neurotypical people and patients with disorders of consciousness. Before coming to Northeastern, Michael was a Junior Research Scientist and Lab Manager in the Ripollés Lab at New York University, the Assistant to the Associate Director of NYU's Music and Audio Research Laboratory (MARL), and a research assistant in the Laboratory of Neural Systems at Rockefeller University. Michael received a B.A. in Biology, Neuroscience, and Cognitive Science from Williams College in 2015. Outside of the lab, Michael loves to bike around Boston and overanalyze TV shows. He and his team are the 2023 champions, and he was the MVP, of the Boston chapter of the APA (American Pool Association).

Morgan McCarty

Morgan McCarty

Northeastern University Research Assistant

Morgan recently graduated from Northeastern with a Computer Science major in the Artificial Intelligence concentration and a minor in Cell and Molecular Biology. His studies have focused on missing components of AI and how incorporating psychological research can help finding them. His research interests are very diverse: from evolutionary algorithms to the dangers of autonomous driving, Morgan is interested in studying anything that can have a direct connection to the human world through the use of AI. In the Subjectivity Lab, Morgan is working on a project for assessing conscious awareness using pupillometry and Virtual Reality. Outside of research and study, Morgan loves to take a step back from technology and hike trails in the woods, go for long bike rides, or row on the Charles River.

Collaborators

Alumni

  • Dillon Plunkett (Eleos)
  • Seth Schallies
  • Krissy Kilgallen (Northeastern University)
  • Odysseas Nikas (Brigham and Women's Hospital)
  • Shivani Manikandan (Vanderbilt University)
  • Saurish Srivastava (Princeton University)
  • Khushi Patel (Massachusetts Government)