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Lucas Vankeuren (’19)

Lucas Vankeuren (’19)

Undergraduate Spotlight
Headshot of Lucas Vankeuren

As a non-psychology major, one of the best parts about working in the Child Study Center is the use of an amazing technology, eye-tracking, which allows us to gain insights that could not be found before.

Lucas is a junior majoring in Information Sciences and Technology. He has been working as a research assistant in Dr. Koraly Perez-Edgar’s Cognition, Affect, and Temperament (CAT) lab. Lucas has been involved in multiple lab tasks, including data collection, behavioral coding, eye-tracking data processing as well as manual gaze corrections, making him an invaluable lab member. His experience in the CAT lab has developed his research interests in child attentional bias and behavioral inhibition. In his honor’s thesis, he plans to compare the efficacy of stationary and mobile eye-tracking in measuring Behavioral Inhibition (BI). He is particularly interested interested in how newer technological tools can be used to improve what researchers understand about attentional biases and BI.

During the summer of 2018, Lucas will be working as a software developer at PPG Paints for his summer internship. Lucas’s short-term goal is to complete his summer internship and finish his honor’s thesis. After graduation, he is interested in pursuing graduate school with a focus on educational technology and eventually become an educational software developer. “A lot of children around the world do not have an equal educational opportunity as children in developed countries. I am interested in working on the open education system, to provide every child an equal chance to learn,” says Lucas.

In his free time, Lucas enjoys rock climbing, playing hockey, fishing and dancing.

We wish Lucas the best as he continues his academic pursuits!