Allison Sekuler

Associate Vice President and Dean, Graduate Studies McMaster University

  • Hamilton ON

Dr. Sekuler is a Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour with expertise is in vision, aging, higher education, & diversity issues.

Contact

Social

Biography

Dr. Allison Sekuler completed her BA, double majoring in Mathematics and Psychology at Pomona College, 1986; and her PhD in Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, 1990. She was the first Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience (2001-2011), and is a Professor, Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster University.

Her current research is funded by NSERC and CIHR, and focuses on vision science, aging, cognitive neuroscience, neural plasticity, learning, face perception, and neurotechnology. Dr. Sekuler has conducted foundational, applied, and clinical research (including research in schizophrenia and autism).

Dr. Sekuler is also an expert in broader areas of higher education, including interdisciplinarity, internationalization, professional development training, and equity, diversity, and inclusivity (EID); and she has won numerous national and international awards for research, teaching and leadership.

Dr. Sekuler has over a decade of experience in University-level administration, serving as McMaster’s first Associate Vice-President (Research), as Associate Vice-President and Dean of Graduate Studies, and twice as the interim Vice-President (Research). Among her many accomplishments, Dr. Sekuler spearheaded McMaster's unique Indigenous Undergraduate Summer Research Scholar Program; supported interdisciplinary academic and research programs, including creation of the McMaster Indigenous Research Institute; and led development of MyGradSkills.ca, a free online professional skills training program for graduate students. She currently is leading development of @mentorsWISE, a virtual mentoring program for women in science and engineering.

Dr. Sekuler is committed to knowledge translation, serving as President of the Royal Canadian Institute for the advancement of science; creating video columns for Discovery Channel; developing public outreach
programs, such as Science in the City; popularizing international programs like Café Scientifique and the 3 Minute Thesis in Canada; and co-founding the successful #ScienceSunday platform.

She has served on and chaired provincial, federal, and international grant review panels and boards related to her research and to education. She currently serves on the Board of Governors for Hillfield Strathallan College; the Governing Board for the Ontario Council of Universities (co-Chair, Academic Colleagues); and NSERC's Committee on Discovery Research (Chair, Fellowships & Scholarships).

Industry Expertise

Education/Learning
Research
Social Media
Writing and Editing

Areas of Expertise

Aging
Face and Object Recognition
Perceptual Organization
Pattern Vision
Motion Perception
Autism
Learning
Neural Plasticity
Neuroimaging
Neurotechnology
Higher Education
Professional Development Training
Women in Science and Engineering
Interdisiplinarity
Internationalization
Graduate Studies

Education

University of California, Berkeley

Ph.D.

Psychology

Pomona College

B.A.

Mathematics and Psychology

Affiliations

  • Professor of Psychology Neuroscience & Behaviour McMaster University
  • Member McMaster Integrative Neuroscience Discovery & Study Graduate Program McMaster University
  • Member School of Computational Science and Engineering Graduate Program McMaster University
  • Adjunct Member Centre for Vision Research York University

Languages

  • English
  • French
  • German

Media Appearances

McMaster University projects awarded $3.3 million to address auto industry, nuclear safety

EurekAlert  online

2016-04-18

"We are delighted that McMaster was awarded funding for two CREATE projects", says Allison Sekuler, interim vice-president, research, noting that only 13 projects were awarded across the country.

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McMaster breaking barriers for indigenous students

The Hamilton Spectator  online

2015-07-29

"We wanted to let students know that they are not alone out there, that they're not the only ones that want to be a physicist or a historian … that there is a route they can take to achieve their dreams and their goals," said Allison Sekuler, professor of psychology and acting vice-president of research at McMaster...

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Faculty jobs are rare, but Canada still needs its PhDs

The Globe and Mail  online

2014-09-10

Fast-forward back to the present, for Janey’s first day as a graduate student: Her eyes are now filled with dread and uncertainty about her future. Janey loves her field of study, but she knows that the years when a PhD was the ticket to a professorship at a prestigious research institution are as long gone as those joyful days of finger painting and puddle splashing...

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Articles

On the time course of attentional focusing in older adults

Psychological Research

2015

Many sensory and cognitive changes accompany normal ageing, including changes to visual attention. Several studies have investigated age-related changes in the control of attention to specific locations (spatial orienting), but it is unknown whether control over the distribution or breadth of attention (spatial focus) also changes with age. In the present study, we employed a dual-stream attentional blink task and assessed changes to the spatial distribution of attention through the joint consequences of temporal lag and spatial separation on second-target accuracy...

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A robust and representative lower bound on object processing speed in humans

European Journal of Neuroscience

2015

How early does the brain decode object categories? Addressing this question is critical to constrain the type of neuronal architecture supporting object categorization. In this context, much effort has been devoted to estimating face processing speed. With onsets estimated from 50 to 150 ms, the timing of the first face-sensitive responses in humans remains controversial. This controversy is due partially to the susceptibility of dynamic brain measurements to filtering distortions and analysis issues...

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Comparing face processing strategies between typically-developed observers and observers with autism using sub-sampled-pixels presentation in response classification technique

Vision Research

2013

In the present study we modified the standard classification image method by subsampling visual stimuli to provide us with a technique capable of examining an individual’s face-processing strategy in detail with fewer trials. Experiment 1 confirmed that one testing session (1450 trials) was sufficient to produce classification images that were qualitatively similar to those obtained previously with 10,000 trials...

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