Personnel

Anjan Chatterjee

Professor of Neurology, Psychology, and Architecture
 anjan@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

Anjan Chatterjee is a Professor of Neurology, Psychology, and Architecture and the founding Director of the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics. He wrote The Aesthetic Brain: How We Evolved to Desire Beauty and Enjoy Art and co-edited Neuroethics in Practice: Mind, Medicine, and Society and The Roots of Cognitive Neuroscience: Behavioral Neurology and Neuropsychology. He has received the Norman Geschwind Prize in Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology and the Rudolph Arnheim Prize for contribution to Psychology and the Arts. He is a founding member of the Board of Governors of the Neuroethics Society, the past President of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics, and the past President of the Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology Society. He currently serves on the Boards of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia and has served on the boards of Haverford College, the Norris Square Neighborhood Project and the Associated Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired.

CV for Anjan Chatterjee

Eileen Cardillo

Associate Director
 eica@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

Eileen Cardillo, DPhil is a cognitive neuroscientist and Associate Director of the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics. Her research focuses on the cognitive and affective impacts of art and aesthetic experiences and their benefits to health and wellbeing. Other areas of interest include the psychological and neural changes associated with contemplative practice, and other routes to mystical experience. Before joining the PCfN, Eileen completed her postdoctoral training at Penn and UC-San Diego and served as the Patient Coordinator of the Focal Lesion Database at Penn’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. She received her doctorate in Experimental Psychology while a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and her B.S. in Biological Psychology at the College of William and Mary. She is co-editor of Brain, Beauty, and Art: Essays Bringing Neuroaesthetics in Focus. Preoccupations outside the lab include chasing after her two kids and working towards a Master of Divinity at the University of Sufism. 

Bella Bobrow

Center Manager
 isabella.bobrow@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

Bella received her B.S. in Neuroscience from UC Santa Cruz, where she also studied art and architectural theory. At the PCfN, Bella supports daily operations, event planning, communications, and the administration of research studies. When not testing a new indie perfume she smells like darkroom chemicals or the inside of a beehive.

Jeffrey Vadala

Researcher
 jeffrey.vadala@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

I am interested in human perception of landscapes and architectural spaces and how they shape both cognitive and cultural processes in contemporary and archaeological contexts. To explore this, my research utilizes virtual reality and augmented reality tools to explore the complexities of human perception at ancient Maya sites in the Yucatan and Belize. As the director of the Penn Neurology VR Laboratory, I currently work as a collaborator and software developer with the goal of bringing virtual and augmented reality approaches and experimental methods to neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, and medical researchers. I owe my interdisciplinary approach and perspectives to my Ph.D. in anthropological archaeology which I received from the University of Florida in 2016 studying how the built and unbuilt landscapes at the Belizean site of Cerro Maya shaped human perception while structuring human and non-human relationships over time. I enjoy all things virtual, philosophy, playing music, making videos, and surreal humor.

Soma Chaudhuri

Postdoctoral Researcher
 soma.chaudhuri@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

I am an experimental psychologist interested in how individuals perceive and evaluate aesthetics and creativity in visual and literary art. My current research focuses on how the moral character of a person is perceived based on their facial beauty (or anomalies), and how individual differences in viewers' personalities influence their opinions. I am also curious about the flexibility or rigidity of our implicit moral judgments of others based on how attractive or unattractive their faces are. I earned my PhD in experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience from Goldsmiths, University of London, where I investigated the behavioral and neural correlates of creativity and aesthetic judgments of poetry. My undergraduate and postgraduate studies were in physics at the University of Calcutta, India. In my leisure time, I enjoy reading, writing, and reciting poetry, as well as reading novels and short stories. I also take pleasure in listening to music and instruments such as the piano and sitar, singing Indian melodies, cooking, painting, and spending time with family and friends. 

Vasiliki Meletaki

Postdoctoral Researcher
 vasiliki.meletaki@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

Vasiliki is interested in how art and design can be used to promote wellness and facilitate emotion regulation in general and clinical population. Her research interests include among others the influence of expertise and psychophysiological characteristics in aesthetic and emotional experiences. Before joining the lab, she was in the Laboratory of Cognitive Neurosciences of CNRS in Marseille, working on interoceptive and psychological characteristics and bodily self on people with vestibular disorders. She received her PhD in Psychology from City, University of London investigating facial emotion perception and brain – body interactions on sensorimotor experts and specifically professional ballet dancers. Before that, she received her MSc. in Psychology from Coventry University where she fell in love with neuroscience investigating the neuroscience of creativity. Outside of the lab, you will find her dancing contemporary, traveling, baking, gardening, playing with her dog, or buying more books and plants.

Theoni Varoudaki

Postdoctoral Researcher
 theoni.varoudaki@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

Theoni explores how aesthetics, architecture and the natural environment shape our brains. Her research interests include the effect of cultural background on the perception and emotional experience of different aesthetic spaces, and their impact on health. She earned her PhD in Neuroscience from Penn State, where she studied the psychological and brain mechanisms underlying pain perception across different natural and urban environments. Prior to that, she completed an MSc in Neuroscience at University College London and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Theatre and Dance Studies at Wheaton College, MA. When she is not in the lab, you will find Theoni dancing salsa, chasing down concerts, trying new restaurants, exploring the outdoors and reading fantasy novels.

Rodin Bantawa

Undergraduate Researcher
 rodinb@sas.upenn.edu

I’m an undergraduate student exploring the intersection of psychology, art, and data to shape our everyday experiences. Whether I’m researching the impact of aesthetics on well-being or getting hands-on behind the scenes in theatre, I’m all about discovering the hidden layers that make life beautiful. When I’m not studying, you might find me wandering through cemeteries, snapping polaroids, or heading off to a spontaneous debate tournament. I love slow mornings with a good cup of tea, painting, and traveling to new places. Randomly in the middle of a day, you’ll likely catch me slow-looking out my window, savoring the small details that often go unnoticed.

Raaneya-Zarah Dehlavi

Undergraduate Researcher

Raaneya-Zarah is a current undergraduate student at Haverford College majoring in Biology and minoring in Neuroscience. She's interested in the neuroscience of aesthetics and the ways our minds apply moral value to beauty. Outside of the lab, she enjoys designing lego sets, drinking cold brew, and doodling cats in her organic chemistry notes.

Daniel Martinez

Undergraduate Researcher

Jennifer Joseph

 Jennifer Joseph Website

Jennifer Joseph is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores systems, perception, and the tension between order and emergent complexity. Working across painting and large-scale sculptural installation, she develops rule-based processes that generate intricate visual fields from simple, elemental actions.

Her paintings prioritize structure and accumulation. Built mark by mark, each surface reveals the physical act of painting while emerging into cohesive, rhythmic compositions. The work balances discipline and variation, exposing the underlying architecture of image-making while inviting sustained looking.

Joseph’s sculptural installations extend these investigations into three dimensions. Using materials such as crocheted copper wire, hand-formed glass, quartz crystal, and light, she constructs spatial environments that evoke organic growth patterns, neuralnetworks, and architectural lattices. These works operate simultaneously as drawing, structure, and mapping invisible systems through material form. Across media, Joseph is interested in how complexity arises from constraint, how repetition becomes transformation, and how labor can function as both structural device and contemplative act.

She received her BFA from Moore College of Art & Design in 1991 and spent twenty-six years working and exhibiting in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her work is included in prominent private and corporate collections, the permanent collection of the New Mexico Museum of Art, and the collection of the State of New Mexico. After five years living and exhibiting in Los Angeles, she is currently based in Philadelphia