Not many graduate students turn down a Fulbright Scholarship, but few have the options, accolades, and awards of Merve Ileri-Tayar, who earned her PhD in psychological and brain sciences this past May.

A native of Turkey, Ileri-Tayar declined a Fulbright in favor of a scholarship from the McDonnell International Scholars Academy, a program that brings top students from around the world to WashU. In addition to the generous scholarship, she was drawn by the kind of research taking shape in WashU’s nationally recognized psychology graduate program. “I’d never lived in the United States before, but I knew WashU was my dream destination,” she said. “I feel so fortunate to be here.” 

For Ileri-Tayar, the McDonnell scholarship was a prelude to greater things. In 2025, she won the Dean’s Award for Graduate Research Excellence, recognizing her work uncovering the brain’s ability to shift attention from one topic to another. In 2026, she was chosen as the graduate student speaker for the Arts & Sciences Hooding and Recognition ceremony, highlighting her leadership and impact within the graduate community. 

Flexible focus isn’t just a field of study for Ileri-Tayar; it’s a way of life. “I’m good at managing multiple lines of work,” she said. “I don’t rely on a single research method or follow just one line of inquiry. I like to collaborate and branch out as much as possible.” 

As an undergraduate psychology student in Ankara, Ileri-Tayar was already following the work of WashU researchers, especially Julie Bugg, a professor of psychological and brain sciences. “Julie communicates complex ideas in a simple way, even in an academic paper,” Ileri-Tayar said. “She asked questions that were very interesting to me, and she was designing cool experiments. Even from Turkey, I could tell that she would be a great mentor.” 

Any lingering uncertainty faded when Ileri-Tayar and Bugg met over Zoom. “We really clicked both academically and personally,” Ileri-Tayar said. “I stopped considering other possibilities.” Working with Bugg, Ileri-Tayar studied attentional control, the brain’s ability to control attention to filter out irrelevant information and focus on what matters. “I’m interested in how people learn to manage their attention,” Ileri-Tayar said. “Attention takes different forms in different situations. Sometimes it’s deliberate, and sometimes it’s automatic. I want to understand the motivations and mechanisms that help us pay attention to what matters.” 

Attention is an especially valuable, and sometimes elusive, commodity for students, Ileri-Tayar said. “We learn over time that particular items have high stakes, so our brains ramp up attention automatically for those items,” she explained. “Students can make the most of this phenomenon by creating their own high-attention cues, like consistently using a specific marker for important information.” 

At every step, Ileri-Tayar had a knack for asking the right questions and designing experiments that could lead to meaningful answers, Bugg said. “In her first semester, she was key in helping us push forward a line of research that ultimately revealed for the first time how learned attentional biases carry over and influence behavior in different situations,” she said. “When Merve is involved in a project, there is never any doubt that it will be executed to the highest standard and she will see it through to completion,” Bugg said. “She has been a great role model and a sought-after collaborator in our department and beyond.” 

During her time in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Ileri-Tayar exemplified the collaboration and student-led research that put the graduate program near the top of national rankings. In addition to her work with Bugg, she teamed up with assistant professor Wouter Kool and Todd Braver, the William R. Stuckenberg Professor in Human Values and Moral Development, to study different states of attention. 

“Working with other researchers was definitely a highlight of my PhD experience,” she said. “We had joint lab meetings, and Wouter and Todd were always open to my ideas.” Those collaborations reshaped how she thinks about attention, emphasizing its dependence on context, motivation, and goals. 

Her experience at WashU prepared Ileri-Tayar for what comes next: a postdoctoral research position at Duke University. “My goal is to keep doing research, become a professor, and eventually mentor students of my own,” she said. “I’ve had an amazing time here. Leaving will be bittersweet.”

This story appeared in the Spring 2026 issue of Ampersand magazine. See more stories from the magazine and browse our archives.