Current Lab Members
Raymundo Báez-Mendoza, PhD
The ultimate goal of my research is to understand the behavioral and neuronal mechanisms governing cognition, particularly our ability to navigate social interactions.
I was born and raised in Mexico City, where I studied Psychology at UNAM -the largest public university in Latin America. I then studied for my master’s with Nikos Logothetis and Kari Hoffman at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany, followed by PhD Studies at Cambridge University working under the supervision of Wolfram Schultz. There I studied how the basal ganglia respond to rewards in social contexts.
I did my Postdoc with Ziv Williams at the Department of Neurosurgery of Massachusetts General Hospital to uncover the neuronal basis of social interactions. I became an instructor in research in 2018.
I began my current position as Junior Group Research Leader in 2022.
Shen Zhang, PhD
Shen graduated from Beijing Normal University with a doctoral degree in cognitive neuroscience in 2023. In his doctoral thesis, he explored how individuals learn by observing and interacting with others.
He then decided to shift from human fMRI techniques to non-human-primate single neuron recordings during his post-doc in Báez-Mendoza Lab at the DPZ studying the same topic. In non-working times, he enjoys playing badminton.
Christopher Tyler Short, MS
Tyler’s research interest is to understand social motivation, specifically the neural mechanisms of reward and decision-making in pro-social and affiliative behaviors. In the Báez-Mendoza Lab, he studies the neural networks underlying social valuation in marmosets.
Tyler earned his Bachelor’s in Neuroscience in 2021 and his Master’s in Applied Cognition & Neuroscience in 2023, both from the University of Texas at Dallas. During his undergraduate studies, he researched vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) in rats to enhance post-stroke motor recovery. As a master’s student, he explored the potential of transcutaneous auricular VNS to improve executive function and investigated the differences between recreational and medicinal cannabis use.
Before joining the Báez-Mendoza Lab, Tyler worked in the Padilla-Coreano Lab at the University of Florida, where he piloted a mouse cooperation task and characterized prefrontal electrophysiological dynamics during reward competition.
Outside the lab, Tyler enjoys bouldering and spending time with his partner and their dog.
Lab Alumni
Halle Hangen, BS
Halle graduated in 2022 from University of Rochester with a Bachelor of Science degree in Brain & Cognitive Sciences and a Minor in Anthropology. She worked as a technical research assistant (TA) in the Báez-Mendoza Lab at the DPZ. She is passionate about animal behavior and has experience in Marmoset vision & cognition research and African wildlife conservation. Halle studies for an MA in Biological Anthropology at the University of North Carolina – Charlotte.
Lea Schott, MS
Lea graduated in 2022 from Chemnitz University of Technology with a Master of Science degree in Sensor and Cognitive Psychology. She worked as a research assistant in the Báez-Mendoza Lab.