Victoria majored in Psychology and minored in Criminal Justice at the University of Iowa. She assisted in the SPARK recruitment efforts during her time at the Michaelson Lab. 

Bari Bloom majored in Speech and Hearing Sciences during her time at UIowa in part due to her interest in working with individuals who have autism. During her time working in the Michaelson Lab, she assisted in the SPARK recruitment efforts, and is now currently working as a Speech-Language Pathologist. 

Florencia completed 6 semesters with the Michaelson Lab, mainly helping with recruitment and data entry. She is now working as a Bilingual Speech-Language Pathologist.

After majoring in Speech and Hearing Science at UIowa, and working on the Genetics of Language Impairment and Twice-Exceptional study in the Michaelson Lab for 2 years, Elisabeth went on to get her masters in Speech-Language Pathology at Northern Illinois University. She is currently working as a Pediatric Speech-Language Pathologist.

Taylor graduated from Carroll University in 2018 with dual BS degrees in Biology and Psychology and minors in Biochemistry and Professional Writing. She is currently attending graduate school for Speech-Language Pathology.

Cate graduated from the University of Missouri in May of 2019 with a BS in Health Sciences and a Psychology minor.

After a successful two years as a SPARK RA, Cate got accepted into The University's Epidemiology graduate program, which she has since completed.

In her free time, Cate likes to travel, go thrifting, and spending time with her friends and family (Including her bernese mountain dog, Desi). 

Leo was one of our MD/PhD student in Iowa's MSTP program and a graduate research assistant in the Michaelson lab. After completing a BS degree in Molecular Biology from UC Santa Cruz, he came to Iowa to pursue his dual passion for medicine and computational bioinformatics. As a member of Iowa's Genetics PhD program, Leo's research focused on applying machine learning techniques to imaging and genetic data to increase our understanding of psychiatric disease. In his free time, Leo enjoys traveling (20+ countries and counting) and reading about new technologies (GPUs, android, etc).

In 2015, Tanner was the first graduate student to join the Michaelson Lab as part of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Genetics. Tanner’s projects focused on the intersection of human language with neurodevelopment, through the study of population-level whole genome sequencing. As a key trait which distinguishes humans from our closest living relatives, Tanner was inspired to study the genetics of language, and is passionate about communicating science broadly. Outside of the lab, Tanner is devoted to his wife, dogs, podcasts and tabletop role-playing games.