Georgetown College. Georgetown University.

Lauren Kaplan

Lauren Kaplan, who is now pursuing a Ph.D. in neuropsychology at Columbia University, was first drawn to the field in high school when she read books by Oliver Sacks.

Having joined Dr. Chandan Vaidya’s lab in her second year at Georgetown, Kaplan, who is originally from south Florida, completed a stellar undergraduate career with honors including a GUROP fellowship. “Once I started in the lab, I was addicted. I consider my training in the lab to be the most significant aspect of my undergraduate education.”

After graduating, Kaplan stayed and worked as the full-time lab manager and research assistant for the lab for a year.

“Working in the lab taught me a lot about successful collaboration, which is becoming increasingly important to neuroscience research as further emphasis is placed on combined efforts of multiple disciplines within the field.”

Kaplan is currently finishing her third year of her doctoral program, working primarily with Tor Wager in Columbia’s Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience Unit. “Most of my work in my current lab focuses on questions that can be addressed in normal healthy adults. However, for my dissertation work, I plan to study these questions in a developmental context. I am using much of the knowledge gleaned during my Georgetown days to develop a paradigm that will be useful to study impulsivity and decision-making in school-aged children.”

Kaplan is getting married at Georgetown next June to Anthony Leotti (COL '04). “We look forward to starting a family together.”

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