Laboratory

Current Research Assistants

Brie Turobiner

Noura Alhomsi

 

Former Lab Members:

2025-2026     Muna Wardere

2025-2026     Micah Pierce

2025-2026     Brooke Baumann

2024-2026     Annelise Smaby: Artz Lab Manager

2024               Emma Sheridan

2024-2024     Em Wilcox

2023-2024     Korai Kayim-Yanko

2023-2024     Kennedy Tutak

2023-2024     Lynsey Knudson

2022-2024     Sophia Keis: Artz Lab Manager

2022-2023     Tera Cudd-Zamora: Artz Lab Manager

2021-2023     Tyler Pham

2021-2023     Leah McAlees-Callanan

2020-2023     Doug Voigts: Artz Lab Manager

2019-2021     Alec Wendelboe

2019-2020     Emily Haefner

2019-2021     Mohammed Mashal (2025 First Decade Hamline University Alumni Award)

2019-2021     Emilia Nolan

2019-2020     Cora Stallcup

2019-2020     Hayley Elbe

2019               Dennis Fleming

2018-2021     Alec Jonason:  Artz Lab Manager

2017-2019     Lila Khan: Artz Lab Manager

2018               Jared Hempel

2017-2019     Laura Epding

2017-2018     Jordan Toth

2016-2018     Alex Lessard: Artz Lab Manager

2016-2018     Tonya Le

2016-2018     Madison Nowling-Kjellberg

2016-2017     Hannah Freske

2016-2017     James Gullickson: Artz Lab Manager

2015-2016     Shelby McCabe

Dedication

10/7/16

Personal remarks:  Thank you all so much for coming to the opening of the Wesley & Lorene Artz Cognitive Neuroscience Research Center.  When our Leadership Gift Officer at Hamline, Marcia Yanz, told me that Jerry was going to donate a substantial sum of money to establish a cutting-edge Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, I was immediately humbled and a bit surprised.  I had just got here and I didn’t know Jerry particularly well.  But soon after I learned of Jerry’s mothers’, Lorene Artz, long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.  I also learned of Jerry’s deep desire to help prevent others from succumbing to a similar fate, through education, science, and research.  Indeed, Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia appear to be a vexing problem of our times.  My own grandmother, Dorothy Farmer, battled Alzheimer’s for over a decade and I saw first-hand how it slowly erodes who we are.  They say our science has lengthened life-times long enough so all of us will now have to deal with some cognitive decline; some loss of our faculties; indeed, maybe even the loss of ourselves.  It can be such a bitter end to a sweet and fulfilled life.  Under my stewardship, one of the primary aims of the Artz Cognitive Neuroscience Research Center will be to examine what neural areas are most vulnerable to decline during aging and their associated functional declines.  One early result from this work suggests that the prefrontal cortex (the very front part of your brain) is critical for doubting; and as this structure begins to decline during aging, individuals tend to be generally more credulous….that is, they accept more information uncritically.  This of course has a lot of implications for why older adults with cognitive decline tend to fall prey to scams and other types of deception more often than younger adults and older adults without cognitive decline.  This area and other related questions will be the primary focus of the Artz laboratory research.  I am incredibly honored to accept Jerry’s gift.  He is not the CEO of a large company or a lucrative businessman.  He is a “mere” professor (I can say “mere” because I am one as well).  But as a professor, Jerry knows how much of an impact his gift can have here at Hamline.  Jerry has seen how education can transform uncertain, first-year students into mature and confident adults ready to change the world. Sure, you can donate to Harvard, but your money will likely be another drop in the bucket to them.  Donate to Hamline?  You directly allow a first-generation student to get a bachelor’s degree.  You directly allow a student to see another country firsthand.  You directly allow a student to test their own hypothesis with their own cutting edge research.  This is what is so unique and wonderful about Hamline.  Our central focus at Hamline is to lift students up, to empower them with a top-notch education.  We mine these diamonds out of the rough.  We polish.  We give them the opportunity to shine.  Here donations actually matter; they transform lives.  Jerry, from the bottom of my heart, thank you; and I know generations of Pipers will be grateful for the opportunity you have given them.  So, without further ado, I would like all of us to give a warm welcome to the person that has made this wonderful lab possible, Professor Jerry Artz.