Principal investigator
Nilsu Atilgan, PhD
Nilsu is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Bilkent University. She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Bilkent University and completed her PhD in Cognitive and Brain Sciences at the University of Minnesota. She then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University.
Her research focuses on reading and visual information processing, with experience spanning her doctoral work and her internship at Meta Reality Labs. Her projects have ranged from low level visual pepetion and attentional mechanisms to optimizing reading parameters for individuals with low vision to improving text legibility in AR/VR systems.
Before joining Bilkent, Nilsu served as the Lead Scientist at The Readability Consortium, a research center based at the University of Florida, where she continues to contribute as a scientific consultant.
Undergraduate/Post-bac Research Assistants And Summer Trainees
Gül Teke
Gül’s research interests include visual perception and reading. She currently works as a volunteer lab assistant studying the relationship between visual span and dyslexia.
Gülçin Yücel
Gülçin is a second-year undergraduate student majoring in psychology at Bilkent University. She is interested in language acquisition, cognitive development, and visual cognition. At the READ Lab, she is currently conducting research on temporal and spatial crowding in relation to reading. She plans to pursue graduate-level research in cognitive or developmental psychology
Mercan Zafer
Mercan is a second-year undergraduate student majoring in psychology at Bilkent University. She is interested in cognitive psychology, reading processes, and visual perception, as well as clinical and criminal psychology. She is currently involved in research examining temporal and spatial crowding and its effects on reading. She aims to integrate her interests in cognition with clinical and forensic perspectives in her future graduate studies.
Öykü Ünyazıcı
Öykü is a second year undergraduate student at Bilkent University studying psychology. She is interested in cognitive processes and reading difficulties. She is currently engaged in research examining the role of temporal and spatial crowding in reading process. She aims to continue her academic work in cognitive psychology in the future.
Hilal Gün
Hilâl is a 3rd year Economics student at Bilkent University. Her research in the lab focuses on visual search, visual information processing, and dyslexia. Hilâl plans to pursue a Master’s degree in neuroscience. Her research interests are neuroeconomics, cognitive economics, and neuropsychology.
Defne Baykal
Defne graduated from the Psychology Department at Bilkent University with a minor in Graphic Design. She is currently formulating her research on visual search and dyslexia. Her research interests are user experience, design, neuromarketing, and cognitive psychology.
Burak Önemli
Burak is a second year psychology student at Bilkent University with a minor in Information Systems and Technologies. His research interests focus on the neural mechanisms and computational modeling of visual and auditory perception. He is currently assisting with research on amusia
Collaborators
• Yingzi Xiong, Johns Hopkins University, USA
• Gordon Legge, University of Minnesota, USA
• Ben D. Sawyer, University of Central Florida, USA
• Sheng He, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
• Aurélie Calabrèse, Aix-Marseille University, CNRS, France
• Meltem Karaca, Assumption University, USA
• Nazbanou Nozari, Carnegie Mellon University, USA