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Ellen H

- Research Program Mentor

PhD Doctor of Philosophy candidate

Expertise

Neuroscience of creativity and music, Parkinson's disease, older adults, Child development, interpersonal entrainment, rhythmic synchrony, arts as a therapeutic intervention, Acting training, Musical Theatre, Auditioning, Writing for the stage, and all artistic creative work

Project ideas

Project ideas are meant to help inspire student thinking about their own project. Students are in the driver seat of their research and are free to use any or none of the ideas shared by their mentors.

Research Proposals and Project Development

If you've never done research before, it can be intimidating to figure out where to start. I can help you develop a research proposal idea, and learn how to put together a written proposal, and possibly even go through the experience of collecting your own data. You want to be passionate about what you study, so we will start with brainstorming what excites YOU! You would then go through a literature review process to identity existing research and find gaps in the literature to discover an interesting question you want to try to answer. We could then put together the project surveys and then possibly even collect your own data through interviews, surveys, or other methods.

Create your own play, musical, or monologue

One of the fun things about working in the arts is it is an opportunity to get creative and express your own work! Your goal would be to put together a short piece, be it a personal monologue, a musical, or a play. You can dream big, and express yourself anyway you want! Once we get some ideas flowing, we would focus on how you tell the story, what your goals are, and how to get them across to your audience. There are no limits in this type of work. We would discover together the best way forward!

Audition Coaching

We all experience audition stress: from doing a great slate, to really nailing your character arc in your 1 minute monologue or 16 bar audition song, there's a lot of pressure! I can help you gain comfort and ease through all parts of your audition process, whether it's for a community theatre audition, auditions for college or conservatory, or your professional career. We will figure out the details of what you need to succeed together.

Data Analysis

In this project, you would learn all the ins and out of analyzing data. This could be anywhere from some coding in R to discover what behavioral data is telling you, to learning how fMRI works and how to analyze, visualize, and report fMRI data. This would be for a highly motivated student who wants to really push themselves and their skillset

Coding skills

proficient in R, basic python

Interested in working with expert mentors like Ellen?

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