Lily Sahakyan is a professor in the Department of Psychology. She is originally from Armenia. She came to the United States in 1995 as an undergraduate, after winning a competitive international exchange program. Her work on intentional forgetting established the importance of mental context in memory retrieval and forgetting, and has transpired the development of novel paradigms and approaches for assessment of different aspects of memory.

Education

• Ph.D., cognitive psychology, Florida State University, 2002

• M.A., counseling psychology, Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, 1997

• B.A., psychology, Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, 1995

• 2021: Arnold O. Beckman Award, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• 2019: Distinguished Alumni Award, Florida State University 

• 2014: Fellow of American Psychological Society

• 2014: Mentorship Award, U.S. Department of Defense

• 2002: Outstanding Dissertation Award, Florida State University

Research areas:

• Cognitive psychology

• Cognitive neuroscience

Research interests:

• Human long-term memory

• Intentional forgetting

• Memory in populations at risk for psychopathology.

Professor Sahakyan’s research involves Intentional forgetting, memory control, role of context in organizing and retrieval of memories, and memory in populations with vulnerability to mental illness. Research in the Sahakyan lab evolves around their fundamental interest in how context shapes and organizes episodic memories, and how context influences retrieval of memories. They use a variety of methods, including behavioral experiments, studies involving fMRI / EEG, as well as eye tracking studies to arrive at a deeper understanding of the role of context in memory. ?Their research is divided into 5 themes: forgetting, contextual drift, individual differences, eye-movements, and neural activity.