People

Dr. Mahon studies the cognitive and neural processes that support activities of daily living. The goal of this research program is to merge insights from neuropsychological investigations with functional and structural studies of the healthy brain to test theories of how the brain works, and to translate those theories into clinically actionable evidence and paradigms.

Professor (Primary): Department of Psychology | Neuroscience Institute, Carnegie Mellon University

Affiliated Faculty: Department of Neurosurgery, U of Rochester Medical Center | U of Pittsburgh Medical Center

Co-Editor-in-Chief: Cognitive Neuropsychology, Taylor Francis

Co-Founder & Chief Science Officer: MindTrace Technologies Inc.

Julien Dirani is a Postdoctoral Researcher using neuroimaging and computational methods to investigate the neural basis of language and meaning. He is interested in understanding not just where meaning is stored in the brain, but also what information these neural representations contain across various contexts and stimulus modalities. He is also interested in how semantic representations interact with word retrieval mechanisms.

He obtained his PhD at New York University where he worked in the Neuroscience of Language Lab supervised by Prof. Liina Pylkkänen. He completed an MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, and a BA in Psychology, with a Minor in Philosophy, from the American University of Beirut.

Katie Binkley is a researcher interested in studying the organization of cognitive functions in clinical populations. She uses a combination of neuroimaging methods (fMRI) and behavioral testing with neuropsychological populations such as adults with epilepsy or tumors to investigate processes like object use and recognition, language, and motor skills.

Jess Smith is a Ph.D student interested in the functional separation of different visual pathways, and how these often anatomically separated information streams integrate to inform our knowledge and perception of the world. She uses a variety of neuroimaging methods, such as fMRI and sEEG with specific neuropsychological populations, such as adults with cortical blindness as result of a stroke to investigate various processes like object use and recognition, face processing, and visuomotor actions.

Raouf Belkhir is an MD/Ph.D student interested in the neuroanatomy that allows the brain to plan and execute speech, with a focus on the neural bottlenecks that determine when linguistic concepts become irreversible motor actions. He primarily uses intracranial electrophysiology (SEEG), white matter diffusion tractography (DTI), and direct electrical stimulation during awake brain surgery to study how different representational formats evolve and interact across distributed cortical and subcortical networks. The central goal of his work is to causally link neural dynamics to human behavior, and bridge cognitive theory to clinical neuroscience in order to inform optimal patient outcomes.

Hugo Angulo is a Research Software Engineer at CAOsLab within the Department of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, where he designs and deploys software solutions supporting research on cognitive development in human and non-human primates. He is also Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of MindTrace, a CMU spin-off developing patented AI-powered neurosurgical planning tools that help clinicians predict post-operative cognitive outcomes. 

His research interests lie at the intersection of computer science, neuroscience, and clinical application, with a focus on leveraging computational methods to advance our understanding of cognition and improve patient outcomes. Hugo is a co-inventor on patents granted in the United States, Australia, and Europe for AI systems in healthcare. He holds an M.S. in Biotechnology Innovation and Computation from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.S. in Telecommunications Engineering from Escuela Politécnica del Ejército in Ecuador.