Science biography

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I am a lab manager in the Robertson Lab at Dartmouth College based in the Kanwisher Lab at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. My projects are focused on visual salience, perception, and attention in autism, and I’ve had the opportunity to use exciting tools like VR eye-tracking, machine learning, binocular rivalry, and neuroimaging to explore these topics. I received my MA from the Dartmouth Digital Musics program where my thesis focused on using neural encoding models to reconstruct naturalistic music stimuli from fMRI data. I graduated from Penn State with a BS in Biology and I have worked in the exciting fields of Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials, deep-sea marine biology, microelectronics, and genomics.

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Non-science biography

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Originally from the suburbs of Philadelphia, I am now splitting my time between Boston and Hanover. In my free time, I enjoy writing and producing music, creating audio-visual art, and thinking about cool things to do with data!

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Special interests

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Music, nature, food, and my Tibetan Spaniel named François

Lab Manager - jsmentch@mit.edu