Lab Director

Dr. Bruno Breitmeyer was born in Germany. Along with his family, he arrived in the United States in 1957 when he was 10 years old. For 11 years he lived in Illinois, where he did his undergraduate studies at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, majoring in Mathematics and minoring in Psychology. For the next four years he lived in Palo Alto, California where he attended Stanford University for graduate studies in Psychology. While at Stanford University he participated in a seminar on visual masking, which eventually became a major research interest.

In 1972 Dr. Breitmeyer joined the Psychology faculty at the University of Houston. From 1973 to 1974 he worked in the Vision Laboratory of Bela Julesz at Bell Telephone Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, and from 1976 to 1977 he collaborated with Lothar Spillmann at the Neurological Clinic of Freiburg University, Germany. Except for those two years, he has been at the University of Houston pursuing research in the area of visual cognition. Besides having published numerous research articles, he has authored or co-authored four published books, with a fifth currently in press.

When not attending to his research and academic duties, Dr. Breitmeyer enjoys traveling, reading, and most any other activity that allows him to explore varied types of geography and terrain. He is also an avid cyclist and enjoys a mixture of culture and entertainment ranging from movies, art exhibits readings, classical music, mellow jazz, and opera, to more earthy down-home Texas folk music, blues, and R&B. Up to now, Dr. Breitmeyer’s favorite foods are Italian, Thai and Vietnamese. His favorite colors: blue, white and earthy tan. His favorite part of the world: the Mediterranean. But Dr. Breitmeyer is, as ever, open to discovery and surprise.

Dr. Breitmeyer can be reached at brunob@uh.edu.

Graduate Students

Jane Jacob started working in the lab in the summer of 2009. She graduated with honors from College of Notre Dame of Maryland with a dual degree in Biology and Psychology. She is interested in the field of visual cognition and visual information processing and is currently working on a few projects dealing with visual memories, feature Inheritance and change detection/blindness.

Jane can be reached at jjacob9@uh.edu.

Melissa Trevino's research interests include studying visual attention. Additionally, investigating the dynamic relationship between attention and memory, specifically working memory.

Melissa can be reached at mtrevino@uh.edu.

Lab Assistants

Rachelle Akpanumoh is a recent graduate of the University of Houston, where she received a BS in Mathematics and a minor in Psychology. Presently, she plans on attending graduate school for Biomedical Engineering.

Brent Carpenter is a senior in college working towards a bachelors of science in psychology with a minor in biology. It is his goal to go to graduate school for computational neuroscience. As far as research interests go, observing natural phenomenon and describing them via a computation sets his heart alight. He endeavors to understand the brain by trying to create models of it, and it is his belief that this is best accomplished via interdisciplinary study. At the moment, the statistical methods of analyzing neural signaling and the neuroscience of learning pique his interest the most.

Shon Mondragon is a recent graduate of the University of Houston, where he received bachelor of science in psychology with a business administration minor. Since comming to UH Shon has been very active on campus through his fraternity, cooking show, and various other campus activities. After completing his undergraduate degree Shon's goal is to pursue graduate studies in experimental psychology. His fascination with understanding the systems the brain uses to decode and function in its world drive his curiosity. Shon is excited to be involved in working on one of the few remaining frontiers, the brain.

Jamie Tran is a senior working towards a bachelor of arts in psychology with a minor in sociology. One of her goals is to go to graduate school for Social Neuroscience. She has a great passion for understanding the underlying biological processes for how we perceive, interpret, and organize our social surroundings and how they are affected by our cultural background. She enjoys learning about most anything in all fields of knowledge.

Previous Members

Evelina Tapia, graduate student, presently at the Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Devon Hitt, Research Assistant
Hannah Mitchel, Research Assistant
Hillary Williams, Research Assistant
Nathalie Dautreuil, Research Assistant
Gabrielle Fraga, Research Assistant
Nourhan Ismaeel, Research Assistant
Liz Broyles, research assistant
Nicoleta Cotoi, research assistant
Christopher Patronella, research assistant
Aisha Adil, research assistant
Melinda Schmidt, research assistant
Fred Macoukji, research assistant
Paul Bui, research assistant
Averie Swanson, research assistant
Stefanie Daniels, research assistant
Jeremy Gonzalez, research assistant
Maria A. Papaioannou, research assistant, Senior Honors Thesis
Ralph Ziegler, visiting international graduate student
Jose Ramon, research assistant
Sara Cavazos, research assistant, Senior Honors Thesis