About Wilma Bainbridge
Wilma Bainbridge is a postdoc at the National Institute of Mental Health, working with Chris Baker at the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition. She recently graduated with her PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studying Brain and Cognitive Sciences with Aude Oliva, in MIT's Computer Science Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Wilma's research interests focus on memorability - exploring what makes certain images easier to remember or forget, and what happens in the brain between perception and memory.
Wilma began her neuroscience research with Marvin Chun's Visual Neuroscience Laboratory, as a cognitive science student at Yale University. She also pursued a related interest in robotics (specifically human-robot interaction) and spent 4 years at Brian Scassellati's Social Robotics Laboratory at Yale, followed by a year-long internship at Masayuki Inaba's JSK Humanoid Robotics Laboratory at the University of Tokyo.
Wilma also has a great love of travel. She has lived in Japan for two years (one in Kyoto, one in Tokyo), and has made her way around to several countries since then. She recently completed a program teaching Python coding from scratch to high school students in Jerusalem. On a related note, she is also dedicated to language study and is currently studying Korean and Arabic.
Note: The photograph used in this header was taken by Wilma spring 2009 during cherry blossom season in Kenrokuen, Kanazawa; heralded as one of the three most beautiful gardens in Japan.