David Eagleman, Ph.D.
Lab Director
I am a neuroscientist with deep interests in sensory substitution, time perception, vision, synesthesia, social neuroscience, and the intersection of neuroscience with the legal system. I serve as an adjunct professor in the department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Stanford University School of Medicine. Separately, I serve as director of the Center for Science and Law, a national non-profit. I am the founder of two companies: BrainCheck (which uses interactive testing on portable tablets to measure brain function) and NeoSensory (which expands human senses).
I am the author and presenter of The Brain, an international 6-hour PBS television series. In this series, I pose a deceptively simple question from a neuroscientist's point of view: what does it mean to be human?
I have written several books, including the New York Times bestseller Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, which was named a Book of the Year by Amazon, Goodreads, the Boston Globe, and others. My other books include Wednesday is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia, Why the Net Matters, and Brain & Behavior: A Cognitive Neuroscience Approach (Oxford University Press). My book of fiction, Sum, is an international bestseller translated into over 30 languages. It was named a Best Book of the Year by Barnes and Noble, New Scientist, and the Chicago Tribune. British musician Brian Eno and I performed a musical reading of Sum at the Sydney Opera House, and German composer Max Richter translated Sum into a full opera at the Royal Opera House in London.
Public understanding of science is a passion of mine, and to that end I have written for the New York Times, Discover Magazine, Atlantic, The Week, Slate, Wired, New Scientist, and others. I speak often on National Public Radio and BBC to discuss what's new and important in science. I have founded a prize in mathematics and physics.
I am fortunate enough to be a Guggenheim Fellow. Within the scientific community, I serve as an editor for the Journal of Science and Law, the Journal of Vision, PLoS One, and Seminars in Brain and Consciousness. I was awarded the Society for Neuroscience Educator of the Year award. I serve on the board of directors for several organizations, including The Long Now Foundation.
Pablo Ormachea
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Postdoctoral Research Fellow |
 Pablo is a graduate of Harvard Law School, where he won its largest student writing prize, served as co-editor-in-chief of the Harvard Latino Law Review, and co-Chair of the Harvard Latin American Law Society. He also holds a Masters of Science in data analytics from Texas A&M University's department of statistics, where he served as a research assistant, won an award for the highest GPA, and received an endowed prize for best capstone project from a non-profit. He has won several fellowships for international work, both for public service and for research abroad. Pablo is the Co-Director of the Center for Science and Law.2016 Prize for graduate with highest GPA in TAMU Analytics MSc program |
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Publications Ormachea PA, Savjani RR, DeLaGarza R, Eagleman DM (2016). The role of neuroscience in drug policy: Promises and prospects. Journal of Science and Law, 2(1): 1-15. Ormachea PA, Davenport S, Haarsma G, Jarman A, Henderson H, Eagleman DM (2016). Enabling individualized criminal sentencing while reducing subjectivity: a tablet-based assessment of recidivism risk. AMA Journal of Ethics, 18:243-251. Ormachea PA, Haarsma G, Davenport S, Eagleman DM (2015). A new criminal records database for large scale analysis of policy and behavior. Journal of Science and Law. 1(1):1-7. Ormachea PA, Langer W (2010). Delivery of Legal Services to Immigrant Small Business Owners: The Problems and a Model to Solve Them, 3 DePaul Journal of Justice, 213. McArthur K, Ormachea PA (2009). International Investor-State Arbitration: An Empirical Analysis of ICSID Decisions on Jurisdiction, Review Litigation, 28:559 (received Addison Brown prize, “awarded annually or biannually for the best essay written by a [Harvard Law] student on a subject related to private international law or maritime law.”) Ormachea, PA (2008). An empirical analysis of state ethanol production incentives: do they work? Texas Review of Litigation, 4(1), 130-144. Ormachea PA (2007). Note, Agricultural Subsidies and the Free Trade Area of the Americas, Law & Business Review of the Americas, 13:139. McArthur, K, & Ormachea, PA (2007). International investor-state arbitration: an empirical analysis of ICSID decisions on jurisdiction. The Review of Litigation, 28(3), 559-594. Ormachea PA (2006). Note, Moiwana Village: The Inter-American Court and the Continuing Violation Doctrine, Harvard Human Rights Journal, 19:283. |
Gabe Haarsma
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Postdoctoral Research Fellow |
Gabe spearheads the Initiative on Neuroscience and Law’s big data analysis of millions of crime records. He graduated from Texas A&M with a PhD in chemical engineering and a specialization in Process Control. This experience exposed Gabe to his love of data analysis, visualization and mathematical model building. Gabe spends his days coding in the statistical language R to analyze and visualize patterns of crime and recidivism.
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Sasha Davenport
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Research Fellow |
Sasha is a Ronald E. McNair Scholar with a BA in Forensic Psychology from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where she won the Leadership and Visionary Award and studied psychological coercion, false confessions and interrogations. As an undergrad, she started an expert witness business specializing in neuropsych assessment and psychopharmacology research for civil and criminal trials. She is currently a graduate student working toward her PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience at Queens College, and has presented research on neuropsychology and asymmetric warfare at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Sasha is a Research Fellow at the Initiative on Neuroscience and Law, and is interested in the neural relationship between the empathy, aggression and criminal behavior trajectories. |
Anna Jarman
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Research Fellow |
Anna joined the Initiative to study how early psychosocial and biological factors contribute to criminal behavior. As an undergraduate at Rice University, she became interested in developmental psychopathology while interning in the Baylor/Menninger Human Neuroimaging Laboratory. Her background includes health policy research for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and three years refining ethical and methodological standards for surgical trials at the Methodist Hospital Research Institute. |
Josh Jackson
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Lab Programmer |
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Josh is a computer guru who has been writing software since he first found a book on the subject in his elementary school library. After spending some time in industry he is returning to academia in hopes of pursuing the hard problem of consciousness and the question of friendly artificial intelligence.Seán Judge
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Research Coordinator |
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Seán is the Lab Manager, bringing organization and sanity to the activities here. Outside the lab, Seán is one of Houston's most sought-after actors. Seán has always been fascinated by the inner workings of the human brain, and thrives as part of an exciting research environment.Lab alumni
Aidin Ashoori, Medical Student
Elyse Aurbach, Research Assistant
James Barger, Research Assistant
Gregory Bohuslav, U.H. Undergraduate Research Student
Hannah Bosley, Research Assistant
Greg Brown, Research Assistant
Benjamin Bumann, Research Assistant
Mingbo Cai, Graduate Student
Christopher Chen, Undergraduate Summer Student
Christopher Chen, Undergratudate Summer Student
Sherry Cheng, Research Assistant
Jennie Choe, Yale Undergraduate Summer Student
Sara Churchill, Research Assistant
Daniel Dascenco, International Summer Student
Evan Delacruz, Programmer
Matthew Fiesta, Summer Research Medical Student
Shilpa Gandhi, Research Assistant
Josh Hesterman, Rice Undergraduate Summer Student
Mehwish Ismaily, Stanford Undergraduate Student
Arielle Kagan, Harvard Undergraduate Summer Student
Keith Kline, Graduate Student
Mike Lara, BCM Medical Student
Francis Lawrence, Research Assistant
Robert LiKamWa, Programmer
Leo Linbeck, Summer student
Kristian Marlow, Research Assistatn
Harsha Mittikani, BCM Medical Student
Lillian Niakan, Yale Undergraduate Summer Student
Scott Novich, Graduate Student
Vani Pariyadath, Graduate Student and Postdoctoral Fellow
Brent Parsons, Research Assistant
Giovanni Piantoni, Research Assistant
Mark Plitt, Research Assistant
James Ryland, Research Assistant
Deepak Sagaram, MD, Graduate Research Assistant
A. Karthik Sarma, MD, Neurology collaborator
Ricky Savjani, Graduate Student
Sarah Schwettman, Research Assistant
Manu Sharma, Clinical Researcher
Jyotpal Singh, Law student, Research Assistant
Thomas Sprague, Research Assistant
Chess Stetson, Graduate Student
Daisy Thompson-Lake, Research Assistant
Josh Tilles, Programmer
Matthew Timberlake, BCM Medical Student
Steffie Tomson, Ph.D
Rejnal Tushe, Rice undergraduate Research Assistant
Don Vaughn, Research Assistant
Helen Vo, Research Assistant
Wilber Wang, Rice undergraduate summer student
Sarah Weinzimmer, Research Assistant