MEET OUR TEAM
Principle Investigator
Laura Simone Lewis
Bio: Dr. Laura Simone Lewis is an Assistant Professor in the departments of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Anthropology at UC Santa Barbara.
She earned her B.S. from Duke University, her PhD from Harvard University, and was a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley.
Laura is fascinated by the evolution and development of social cognition in great apes, especially the mechanisms that we use to form, build, maintain, and repair long-term social relationships. Besides hanging out with great apes, Laura loves rock climbing, swimming in the ocean, making pottery, and backpacking in the mountains.
Emily M. Sanford
Postdoctoral Researcher
Bio: Dr. Emily M. Sanford is a postdoctoral researcher at both UC Santa Barbara and UC Berkeley, working with Dr. Lewis as well as Dr. Jan Engelmann. She received her PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 2022, where she studied numerical cognition with Dr. Justin Halberda. Using techniques from cognitive science, developmental psychology, animal behavior, and psychophysics, with a particular focus on analytical and research methods, her research addresses fundamental questions about the phylogenetic and ontogenetic origins of quantitative reasoning.
Amanda Goguen
PhD Student
Bio: Amanda is a Ph.D. student in Psychological & Brain Sciences at UC Santa Barbara.
She holds a B.A. in Psychology from CU Denver. She previously worked in the Comparative Cognition Lab at UC San Diego, assisting in data collection and analysis for the Macaque and Canine Cognition projects. She has also collected data at Born Free USA (Texas), Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary (Kenya), and Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary (Uganda), gaining valuable field experience with primates.
Amanda is particularly interested in how theory of mind abilities and social relationships influence decision-making in cooperative and competitive contexts in chimpanzees, bonobos, and children. Additionally, she wants to explore how self-image and social reputation shape behaviors in social settings. In the future, she hopes to broaden her research to include comparative studies with non-primate animals. In her free time, she likes to play with her dogs, see friends, explore nature, and draw.
Topaz Mizrahi
Lab Manager
Bio: Topaz is a recent graduate of UC Santa Barbara, where she earned her B.S. in Psychological and Brain Sciences. She is passionate about understanding how cognition and behavior develop across species, with research interests in comparative cognition, animal behavior, and child development from both evolutionary and developmental perspectives! She plans to continue gaining research experience in the BOOM Lab before pursuing a Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology.
Fun Fact: Topaz has two pitbulls named Belle and Dice!
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANTS
LAB ALUMNI
Maia Richards '26 - Student Lab Manager
Eliza Pasha '26 - Undergraduate RA
BOOM Lab Team
Dr. Lewis and BOOM Lab PhD student Amanda Goguen, alongside student lab managers and undergraduate research assistants at their Spring 2026 lab social!