BSc.- Psychology, Middle East Technical University, Ankara Turkey
MSc.-Clinical Psychology, Middle East Technical University, Ankara Turkey
PhD (all but dissertation)-Clinical Psychology, Neurological Sciences and Psychiatry Institute, Hacettepe Medical School, Ankara Turkey
PhD- Psychology/Cognitive Neuroscience, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo NY
Post-doctoral fellowship:
Clinical Neuropsychology, Jacobs Neurological Institute, SUNY Medical School

Dr. Tekok-Kilic is a clinical cognitive neuroscientist and Fulbright alumnus who joined to the department of Child and Youth Studies at Brock University in July 2008. Before coming to Brock, she was an established scholar with an extensive clinical and research training in mental health, neuropsychology, and cognitive electrophysiology.

Currently, she studies cognitive, sensory, affective and temperamental aspects of executive control/self-regulation in anxiety and attentional difficulties from a developmental psychopathological framework. Her recent research also involves understanding the sex-biases in ADHD and anxiety. In her research she uses EEG based metrics, neurocognitive tests, and self-report questionnaires.

BA, First-Class Honours-Linguistics, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
PhD, Linguistics (focus on Psycholinguistics), University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA
Post-doctoral fellowship:
UBC Infant Studies Centre, Dept. of Psychology, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Dr. Suzanne Curtin is a developmental cognitive scientist who joined Brock in 2020. Her research studies interface between early speech perception and social communication in typically and atypically developing populations. The goal of her research program is to understand how early speech perception and word learning contributes to the acquisition of a phonetically driven phonological system. She is also interested in the nature of the infant’s initial state and how this influences the infant’s developing speech perception system. Her research explores the role of early biases in directing attention to the necessary information in the speech signal that will enable the infant to bootstrap into language. She also examines infants’ sensitivity to distributional information in the speech input and explores how this information is used for parsing the continuous speech stream and learning words. Her research is funded by SSHRC and NSERC. She is one of the co-leads for the SSHRC Partnership Grant, “Ensuring Full Literacy in a Multicultural and Digital World,” which brings together her interest in how early language impacts other aspects of cognition – specifically reading. In addition to her role as a Professor in Child and Youth Studies, Suzanne is also the Vice-Provost and Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies.

BSc. Honours-Psychology and Biology, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario
PhD.-Psychology/Cognitive Neuroscience/Language Acquisition, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec
Post-doctoral fellowships:
Neuro-Education across the Lifespan Lab, Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre, Toronto, Ontario
Learning Disabilities Research Program, SickKids Research Institute, Toronto, Ontario
Neurosciences and Mental Health SickKids Research Institute, Toronto Ontario

Dr. Erin Panda is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist who came to Brock in 2018. She is interested in how the brain processes language and focuses our attention, how these processes change with development, learning and remediation, and how to effectively implement research findings into classrooms and clinics. She’s the kind of person that loves learning new things. During her PhD she studied how the brain changes when we learn a second language. She went on to do three postdocs to study: 1) music-based cognitive training on the neurocognitive basis of language and attention in young children; 2) reading remediation in children with co-morbid reading disabilities and ADHD; 3) development of the brain’s language networks in typically developing children and children with epilepsy. Currently, she uses electrophysiology (EEG) to track developmental changes to children and young people’s brain network responses while they read, listen to speech and direct their attention. Working in collaboration with local school boards, another research arm evaluates how evidence-based educational programs can improve learning outcomes.

Outside of Brock, she loves yoga, hikes in the forest, sunny days on the beach, and time with her family.

BA, Psychology, McGill University, 1970
Ph.D. Cornell University, 1974, with major in Human Development, minors in Neurobiology and in Linguistics.

I joined the Brock Psychology Department in 1974, was Director of the interdisciplinary Child Studies Programme before its establishment as the CHYS Department, and was the Founding Director of the Jack and Nora Walker Centre for Lifespan Development Research (2007-2020).

I have mainly been interested in studying how we can make use of EEG brain responses to better understand specific thinking processes and certain personality attributes. For the thinking processes, my research has focused especially on developmental growth patterns as well as brain responses to cognitive challenges in attention, inhibitory control, and more recently linguistic issues. For the personality issues, the focus has been on individual differences and their brain response correlates. More recently, I have also focused on developing better mathematical techniques for relating EEG responses to the psychological factors. Although I retired from teaching in 2020, I remain active in specific research projects on these topics. However, I am also now able to indulge my lifelong passion for chamber music, currently playing clarinet in a classical music group and in a Klezmer band.

Veronica Panchyshyn

PhD Student

Veronica is a PhD student under the supervision of Dr. Ayda Tekok-Kilic and has been a member of the Developmental Neuroscience Lab (DN-Lab) since 2019. Veronica graduated with an honours Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour from McMaster University in 2017. Her Masters of Education in Applied Behavioural Analysis from the University of Western Ontario in 2019, and is now perusing her Doctoral degree at brock University in the Child and Youth Studies Department. Veronica’s clinical experience includes working as an Instructor Therapist with children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and as a Rehabilitation Facilitator to assist adults that have sustained an Acquired Brain Injury. Veronica’s research interests include anxiety risk factors (sex differences, intolerance of uncertainty, sensory sensitivity), Acquired Brain Injury, children and youth with exceptionalities, and mental health.

Alicia Miller

PhD Student

Alicia is a PhD student in the Child and Youth Studies program and is under the supervision of Ayda Tekok-Kilic. She has received her Honours of Bachelors in Child and Youth Studies from Brock University and completed a Masters of Education in Counselling and Psychotherapy at the University of Toronto. She is working on becoming a Qualifying Psychotherapist at this time. She works from a scientist-practitioner model and uses trauma informed approaches in her clinical work. Her research experience includes examining ADHD, Anxiety, temperament, sensory processing and executive functions as risk factors for externalizing and internalizing issues/disorders. Other research interests include areas such as, mental health, addictions, trauma and resiliency.

Zihang Bu

PhD Student

Zihang is a PhD student in the Department of Child and Youth Studies under the supervision of Dr. Ayda Tekok-Kilic. She completed the Bachelor’s degree at Dalian Medical University with majoring in Applied Psychology, and She received MA in Child and Youth Study at Mount Saint Vincent University in Nova Scotia. Zihang is now interested in applying the Biopsychosocial Model to mental health intervention and evaluation, neuroscience research on bilingual children, and psychological/developmental issues of children and youth.

Lauren Stepien

MA Student

I am currently a MA student in the Department of Child and Youth Studies working with Dr. Tekok-Kilic. I recently graduated from the Neuroscience program here at Brock where I completed my honours thesis on sex differences in anxiety and temperament in the Developmental Neuroscience Lab. I’m thrilled to be continuing my research in this lab while using use EEG, neuropsychological and questionnaire data to study anxiety and ADHD and their relationship with individual differences such as high sensitivity, sex differences and more!

Ben Johnson

MA Student

Ben Johnson is a MA student at Brock University in the Department of Child and Youth Studies under the supervision of Dr. Erin Panda. He is also a member of the Lifespan Development Research Institute. He received a BA in Psychology at Brock University. He has a variety of research interests, including attention, psychopathology, invisible disabilities, and children’s literacy. He is also passionate about the ways in which research informs policy and practice, particularly in the educational context.

Chae Lynn Bush

MA Student

Chae is a MA student in the Department of Child and Youth Studies under the supervision of Dr. Ayda Tekok-Kilic. She received her Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree in Psychology from Brock University in 2022. Chae’s current thesis work uses eye tracking to assess the relationship between anxiety and inhibitory control. She is generally interested in how anxiety affects executive function and is passionate about the impact of mindfulness-based interventions on cognition.

Emma Boswell-Hicks

Undergraduate Student

Emma is a fourth-year undergraduate student majoring in Medical Sciences and minoring in Child and Youth Studies. She is currently working on her undergraduate thesis looking at ADHD, executive function and mental health in youth under the supervision of Dr. Erin Panda. As a student interested in pursuing a career in Child Life as well as research, Emma’s topics of interest lie heavily in executive function development as well as the mental health (and mental illness, specifically anxiety) of children and youth.

Serene Haq

Undergraduate Student

Serene is a fourth-year undergraduate student at Brock University. She is currently completing an Honours BSc in Neuropsychology and working on her undergraduate thesis under the supervision of Dr. Erin Panda. Serene is excited to have joined the developmental neuroscience lab here at Brock. She is eager to start working on her research as she would love to eventually become a pediatric neuropsychologist. Her research interests include how electroencephalography can help us understand language, reading, and writing skills, as well as how children are able to focus their attention when certain distractors are involved. Specifically, studying functional brain networks and neuroplasticity.

Masum Patel

Undergraduate Student

Masum Patel is in neuroscience in their 4th year. Masum is an international student from Kenya and research interests include how the brain works in problem solving, attention, anxiety and using EEG, specifically in children where they have been given different tasks and are told to complete them.

Brock Science Mentorship Program (High School Students)

• Zoe Delrue, Holy Cross Catholic Secondary School, 2022-2023
• Mayah Causens, A.N. Myer Secondary School, 2019-2020
• Jacob Zhang- St. Michael Catholic High School, 2017-2018
• Eric Sun- A.N. Myer Secondary School, 2016-2017

MA Students

• Jonah Kember (Child and Youth Studies, 2022)
• Carolynn Hare (Child and Youth Studies 2020)
• Melissa Nichol (Child and Youth Studies 2014)
• Carleigh Sanderson (Child and Youth Studies 2013)
• Monika Ovsonka (Child and Youth Studies 2012)

Honours Theses Students

• Paige Vaccarella (Child and Youth Studies & Psychology, 2022)
• Renae McLean (Neuroscience Program-Neuropsychology Stream, 2022)
• Sophia Nelson (Neuroscience Program-Neuropsychology Stream, 2022)
• Liam Winters (Neuroscience Program-Neuropsychology Stream, 2022)
• Chelsey Goorbachan (Neuroscience Program-Neuropsychology Stream, 2021)
• Abraham Omogierava, (Neuroscience Program-Neurobiology Stream, 2019)
• Chris Desorsiers, (Neuroscience Program-Neuropsychology Stream, 2019)
• Cassandra Gordon (Child and Youth Studies-Psychology, 2017)
• Nicole Statie, (Child and Youth Studies, 2017)
• Erica Sullivan (Child and Youth Studies, 2017
• Maggie Lewis (Child and Youth Studies, 2014)
• Jessica Garon (Child and Youth Studies, 2012)
• Melissa Prior (Child and Youth Studies, 2011)
• Lindsy Nicholson (Child and Youth Studies, 2010)