Meet The Team

Principal Investigator

Fazilet Zeynep Keles, PhD

Dr. Fazilet Zeynep Keles received her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Bern in 2021, following an M.Sc. in Neuroscience (2016) and a B.A. in Psychology (2014) from Bilkent University. She subsequently held postdoctoral positions at the University of Lille (2023) and the University of Fribourg (2025), where she advanced her work on the interaction between perception, attention, and mental imagery using high-dimensional behavioral and neural data. She integrates experimental psychology with advanced neuroscience methods, including EEG, fMRI, and computational modeling, to address fundamental questions about how humans perceive and interpret the visual world.

Master Student

Georgia Vargemidou

Georgia received her Bachelor’s in Psychology from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Fribourg. Her research combines the Implicit Association Test (IAT) with fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS) to probe the neural correlates of implicit gender associations. Her work has implications for understanding how implicit gender biases shape early perceptual processing and contribute to stereotyping and discriminatory behavior.​

Master Student

Lisa Jequier

​​​Lisa hold a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Lausanne (2022) and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Fribourg. She combines the Implicit Association Test (IAT) with fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS) to investigate implicit racial associations and their neural signatures. Her research interests span social cognition, human food behavior, addiction mechanisms, and the use of mindfulness-based interventions for stress and chronic pain management. She hopes to continue contributing to research in these diverse areas.

Master Student

Melisa Kurtic

Melisa earned a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Fribourg (2023) and is now pursuing a Master of Science in Psychology with a specialization in Cognitive Neuroscience at the same institution. Passionate about understanding the brain and behavior, she focuses her research on neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience. Her research investigates how the presence of contextual faces from different racial backgrounds influences neural face discrimination using EEG combined with the fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS) paradigm.

Master Student

Lara Cicmilovic

​Lara received her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Lausanne. She is currently pursuing her Master’s degree in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Fribourg. In the context of her master thesis, she is working on a research project investigating how surrounding facial expressions shape the brain’s rapid responses to emotional faces using EEG coupled with fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS). In the future, she aims at exploring the impact of the early use of screen on the development of the brain and by which means to exploit the power of the brain’s plasticity to limit the negative consequences. She is also interested in investigating the impact of music on the human brain, specifically focusing on how music can shape and impact the brain structure and functional network.​​

Master Student

Mariana Gutierrez-Perez

Mariana earned her degree in Psychology from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Her research examines how contextual emotional information — the facial expressions of people surrounding a target face — influences both our perception of emotions and the brain’s rapid responses to those expressions. Her research interests also include the interaction between hormones and cognition.