Lab Staff
April Benasich, Ph.D.
Director
Dr. Benasich is the Elizabeth H. Solomon Professor of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. She is also the Director of the Infancy Studies Lab and Director of the Carter Center for Neurocognitive Research. She received her PhD in experimental/cognitive neuroscience and a PhD in clinical psychology from New York University.
She has been studying development of temporally-bounded sensory information processing (a major predictor of language impairment and dyslexia), the neural substrates that support these developing abilities and the relations seen with emerging language/cognitive abilities from infancy through early childhood. Examination of auditory evoked potentials (EEG/ERPs), complex auditory brainstem response (cABR) and naturally sleeping MRI/fMRI provide converging noninvasive physiological measures to her lab’s extensive behavioral battery.
Data are also being gathered on an infant behavioral intervention developed to gently guide the developing brain to set up more efficient pathways for mounting language. Her findings are groundbreaking, as she has demonstrated for the first time that the ability to perform fine non-speech acoustic discriminations in early infancy is critically important to and highly predictive of later language development. These data further suggest that measures of rapid auditory processing ability may be used to identify and importantly, remediate infants at highest risk of language delay/impairment regardless of risk status.
Cindy is the research coordinator for the Infancy Studies Lab. She received her B.S. and M.S. in speech-language pathology from Loyola University in Maryland. She holds a Certificate of Clinical Competence from the American Speech-Language Hearing Association, NJ state licensure to practice speech-language pathology, and NJ school certification as a speech-language specialist.
Her research interests include understanding brain mechanisms involved in auditory information processing in the first two years of life and their relationship to speech and language development.
Cindy Roesler, M.S., CCC-SLP
Research Speech Pathologist
Beenish is a graduate student in the Behavioral and Neural Sciences Program at Rutgers University. She has a B.S. in neuroscience and behavior from the University of Miami. Previously, she was a research coordinator at the Epilepsy Center at NYU Langone Medical Center. Her research focuses on auditory processing in infants, how the developing brain responds to sounds, and how neural responses differ among infants at higher risk of developmental disorders. She’s also interested in exploring the relationship between auditory and visual perceptual processing and its relevance to language development abilities.
Beenish Mahmood, B.S.
Ph.D. Candidate, Behavioral and Neural Sciences
Rebecca is a NJ certified school psychologist and research psychologist at the Infancy Studies Lab. She earned a B.A. in psychology with highest honors from Oberlin College in 1994 and received her Psy.M. degree in school psychology from the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, Rutgers University in 1998. She specialized in infant and early childhood development through the Infant Specialized Interdisciplinary Studies (ISIS) program. She has worked as a school psychologist, a college learning consultant, and a researcher in two developmental labs.
Rebecca Reale, Psy.M.
Senior Research Psychologist
Julianna Nails, B.A.
Lab Manager
Laura is a first-year graduate student in the Behavioral and Neural Sciences Ph.D. program here at Rutgers University. She graduated with a B.S. in biological sciences from Rowan University with accompanying neuroscience and psychology minors. Her research interests include auditory processing, neuroplasticity within the brain, and cross-modal reorganization. She looks forward to learning more about infant development and language acquisition and is excited to be a part of the lab!
Laura Milovic, B.S.
Ph.D. Student, Behavioral and Neural Sciences
Teresa is the project coordinator at the Infancy Studies Lab. She earned her B.A. in biology and psychology at Rutgers, and her MPH with a specialty in biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
Her research interests include processing and analysis of electrophysiological measures and eye-tracking data to study infant information processing and its relationship to early cognitive and language development. She is responsible for the maintenance and update of the lab's experimental equipment as well as preparing data for sharing with collaborators.
Teresa Realpe-Bonilla, M.P.H.
Project Coordinator
Julie is a registered nurse. She hails from Minneapolis, MN, where she received her nursing education from the University of Minnesota and Bethel College. Her research interests include the child as a recipient of inputs from objects and events occurring in connection with parental responsivity in the home environment. She is also currently performing Autism Diagnostic Observations (ADOS) assessments for the NJLAGS study, which is investigating how genes influence the development of Autism.
Julie Morgan-Byrne, R.N.
Research Assistant and Parent Liaison
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