The Holt Lab

People

Lori L. Holt

Principal Investigator

Lori L. Holt is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. She earned a BS in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1995 and a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the same institution in 1999. She joined the faculty of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University as faculty in 1999 where she was an active member, and ultimately co-director, of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition. She joined the faculty at UT-Austin as Professor of Psychology in Fall 2023. 

Dr. Holt studies the cognitive and neural basis of listening, especially as it relates to speech. She has been particularly interested in the role of learning and attention in shaping how we communicate and listen.

Dr. Diego Mac-Auliffe

Postdoctoral Researcher

Diego is a Research Scientist who earned his Medical degree from the Universidad de los Andes in Chile, a Master’s in Neuroscience from the Universidad de Chile, and a Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Lyon 1 in France. From 2020 to 2025, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, working in the CNBI Lab and the Hamilton Lab. His research spans auditory and language perception, attention, decision-making, and motor and language production. His earlier work focused on multitasking, distraction, and mind wandering, while his current projects explore auditory and language production, cognitive applications of brain–computer interfaces (BCIs), and motor rehabilitation after central nervous system injury. Diego enjoys combining clinical insight with neuroscience and engineering approaches, integrating noninvasive and invasive brain recordings, neuroimaging, and machine learning in his work. Outside the lab, he loves travelling, reading, good coffee, and experimenting with new food and drink recipes.

Dr. Kaho Magami

Postdoctoral Researcher

Kaho is a postdoctoral researcher who received her BA in Liberal Arts from International Christian University (Japan) and her PhD in Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience from University College London (UK). She studies how the brain continuously interacts with the background sounds that surround us: How do these sounds inform us about our environment? What statistical structure do we extract? And how does our internal state shape our listening experience? During her PhD, she investigated the computational mechanisms underlying auditory scene tracking and how these processes influence everyday performance, combining EEG, eye-tracking, computational modeling, and skin conductance measures. Her current work examines how listeners learn from environmental sound statistics and how this learning shapes speech perception and production. Outside the lab, she enjoys dancing, reading, and exploring different kinds of tea.

Lin Zhou

Research Associate

Lin received her B.S. in Neuroscience from Emory University in 2024, with a minor in Quantitative Sciences. Shortly after graduation, she relocated to Austin, Texas, and joined the lab as a post-baccalaureate researcher. Her previous research focused on decision-making strategies guided by sound in rodents’ maternal behavior, and now, she is studying auditory learning in humans. She is fascinated by how the brain processes auditory information and drives complex behaviors. Her current research includes dimension-based statistical learning and speech perception-production interaction. Outside the lab, Lin can often be found exploring nature with her beloved dog, helping in the animal shelter, or experimenting with new recipes in the kitchen.

Lab Alumni

Former Postdocs

Travis Wade

Scientist

Posit Science

Kaori Idemaru

Professor

University of Oregon

Daniel Hufnagle

Hufnagle Solutions, Inc

Neeraj Sharma

Assistant Professor

Indian Institute of Science Guwahati

Vibha Viswanathan

Visiting Assistant Professor

Carnegie Mellon University

Sahil Luthra

Assistant Professor

Stony Brook University

Alexandria Vail

Postdoctoral Researcher

Carnegie Mellon University

Craig Thorburn

Assistant Instructional Professor

University of Chicago

David Wozny

Principal Enterprise Architect

Cook MyoSite

Eva Reinisch

Junior Research Group Leader

Austrian Academy of Sciences

Yafit Gabay

Associate Professor (tenured)

University of Haifa

Julia Zhang

UX Researcher

Google

Mishaela DiNino

Assistant Professor

University of Buffalo

Franziska Bröker

Work and Leadership Culture Coordinator

Max Planck Institute

Austin Luor

Human Factors Scientist

Exponent

Former PhD Students

Daniel Mirman

Senior Lecturer

University of Edinburgh

Joseph Stephens

Professor

Xavier University

Erica Laing

Project Scientist

Carnegie Mellon University

Sung-joo Lim

Assistant Professor

SUNY-Binghamton

Matt Lehet

Postdoctoral Researcher

Chatham University

Charles Wu

Data Scientist

Split

Hui Zhang

PhD Student Visitor

Shanghai Jiao Tong University & City University of Hong Kong

Chisom Obasih

Rotation Student

Jenah Black

Rotation Student

Erin Ingvalson

Research Associate Professor

University of Washington

Sara Guediche

Assistant Professor

Augusta University

Jingyuan Huang

User Experience Researcher

Google

Ran Liu

VP & Chief AI Scientist

Amira Learning

Casey Roark

Assistant Professor

University of New Hampshire

Tim Murphy

Postdoctoral Researcher

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Austin Luor

Postdoctoral Researcher

University of Texas at Austin

Alana Hodson

Rotation Student

Sunreeta Bhattacharya

Rotation Student

Former PhD Students

More than 75 students supervised in independent research. Seven undergraduate students are presently training.