JUDY LOBO - UCSD

1. How did you become interested in cognitive science/psychology?
   I had brilliant professors in college who made it fun and interesting. Even though I was already in neuroscience as a major, I started taking lots of courses asking questions about topics like memory and cognition. While I was doing my PhD in neuropsychology, I switched into cognitive neuroscience.

   2.   What is the focus of your research?  
   My focus started in neuroimaging work with HIV. I then moved into aging. Overall, my research focusses on what health does to your brain and brain activity. I am interested, for example, in what inflammation does to the brain.

   3.  What aspects of your work do people get really excited about?
   When I speak to people outside of universities, they are usually most interested in the aging part of my work. They want to know what they can do to keep their brains from deteriorating. A more common question I get, is how they can help their parents and grandparents keep a healthy brain for longer. I try to keep up with the science literature to answer these questions. The neuroimaging part of what do can be more intimidating, but people are curious about the brain in general.

   4.  Where do you see your research going over the next few years? I don’t see any big changes. At the moment, I’m doing a project looking at the effects of the pandemic on stress so that might change. However, I will probably keep working on related questions.

   5.   Do you see yourself in industry or academics moving forward? I’m still exploring options because I just started my postdoc. My aim is to stay in academia as long as I can. I’ve been warned it is hard to get an academic position as a person of color. Lately, I have seen incentives to hire these faculty though. I am still keeping myself open to industry or academia or perhaps a combination of both. I also feel as though perhaps I have to stay because there are so few Latinas in academia and I do love working in research.

   6.  What's it like being a person of color in cognitive science? I started out thinking it wouldn’t make a difference at all. I was very optimistic coming into graduate school. My advisor told me directly that you, like me, are a person of color and a scientist so one of two things are going to happen when you walk into a room: People will think you must be excellent to be here or you are only here because of a diversity program and you aren’t as good as everyone else. Through things I learned in my graduate program, I’ve seen this happen. Even intelligent people do not realize they have these biases. I recently heard that to be a person of color you have to be excellent. To be president you have to be an Obama. There are all these extra hurdles and challenges. People who are not aware of these challenges may think it’s easier for students from under-represented backgrounds to receive grant money, awards, and jobs-which is not true. It’s a very strange situation but it has not been enough to dissuade me and I’ve been able to see other people make it in the field despite these challenges.

   7. Any advice for grad students and postdocs of color? I don’t think I need to give this advice because it happens naturally. My advice is to talk to each other and faculty from related backgrounds. They won’t all be allies but I’ve found great friends and mentors that way. Talk to other students about the strange things that are happening around you and together you may find ways we can improve the environment for future students. If you can, push to hire more diverse faculty.