Neuroscience Professor,
Data Jock,
and Athletic Nerd
Hello and welcome! My name is Alex Cates and I am currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Lake Forest College. My current research focuses on how vision and movement interact with and influence each other.
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Beyond that, I enjoy data science and use it to analyze and explore everyday topics including Fantasy Football and the board game Settlers of Catan.
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So please, scroll through this page and site to see what I have worked on in the past, some questions that I am currently stuck on and how to contact me. I am always looking to connect with interesting people.
Research Experience
Hamilton College
Major: Neuroscience
Minor: Mathematics
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4 years of varsity Crew
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Research into Fitts Law, fNIRS, and emotional impact on visual perception
2011-2015
Halo Neuroscience
Senior Research Associate
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Research into tDCS for athletic training.
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Assisted academic and industry research partners in design of tDCS studies
2015-2018
Northwestern University
Neuroscience Ph.D
Human Agility Lab
PI: Dr. Keith Gordon
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Gaze and Gait: How Motor Learning and Concussive Injury Change Where We Look and Our Visual Reliance
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2018 - 2023
Coaching
My coaching philosophy focuses on sparking a lifelong love for the basketball while honing essential skills. With experience coaching boys and girls grades 3-6, I've seen firsthand the growth that is possible when the kids are having fun!
I champion a "Small-Sided Games" approach to coaching, emphasizing game-like experiences in a scaled-down setting. This allows each player to engage more frequently and meaningfully with the ball, develop their fundamentals, and have more fun playing the game.
Coaching
Teaching
I'm committed to leveraging evidence-based teaching methods to maximize my students' experiences. Emphasizing active learning techniques and project-centric curricula, my teaching portfolio includes specialized neuroscience courses and hands-on workshops in data science and programming.
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Beyond the classroom, I'm interested in the science of teaching itself. Working through CIRTL, I've led a teaching focused journal club and have researched how to analyze teaching evaluations. This research both informs my own practice and helps modernize teaching methods.
Teaching
Passing it on
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Questions I am stuck on
Beyond my day to day, there are a few questions that I keep coming back to. Here I try to capture those, define the question and provide links to some of my musings on what the answer may look like.
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Please take a look and get in touch if you want to discuss any of the problems listed!
