Shannon Proksch is a PhD candidate in Cognitive & Information Sciences. Her interdisciplinary background spans music theory, philosophy, language, and cognition. She graduated in 2015 from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi with a B.A. in Music and minors in Psychology & Philosophy, before going on to receive her MSc in Philosophy of Mind, Language, and Embodied Cognition with the University of Edinburgh, Scotland in 2017. At UC Merced, Shannon works in the Sensorimotor Neuroscience lab. She has used Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation to investigate the neural dynamics of rhythm perception in music, and nonlinear statistical methods to evaluate social coordination in musical ensembles and large groups of people. She collaborates with many researchers locally and internationally.
Shannon has been a formidable organizer in the Cognitive & Information Sciences (CIS) graduate program as a founding member of the CIS Graduate Student Group. Serving as Professional Development Officer for this organization, she has facilitated numerous events for fellow graduate students – from workshops on navigating life in graduate school, alumni panels focused on the academic and industry job markets, to weekly (virtual) social and networking lunches between graduate students and faculty throughout the COVID19 pandemic.
