Me in Grand County, Colorado (2019)

Welcome to my website. My name is Colin McGregor, and I’m a senior (Class of 2020) at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. I’m getting my degree in cognitive science with a minor in psychology.

I work closely with the Hopkins Center for Music and Medicine (under the leadership of principal investigators Drs. Alexander Pantelyat and Serap Bastepe-Gray), and I’ve been involved with two of its premier projects:

1. “PD Strummers” — a project that taught 24 people with moderate to advanced Parkinson’s Disease to play guitar; participants saw improvements in quality of life and upper extremity function
2. “Drum-PDHD” — a similar project to what I mentioned above except it’s ongoing, involves eight participants (five with Parkinson’s Disease and 3 with Huntington’s Disease) and their spouses, and utilizes drumming/percussion instead of guitar playing.

My notable work for these projects has included performing cognitive tests, administering questionnaires, assisting with data analysis, and recruiting new participants.

What else on my research background?

Aside from working with the JHMI CMM, I also spent time as an assistant in the laboratory of Dr. Jeffery Bowen, a social psychologist specializing in the field of romantic relationships.

My work for his lab involved using the Linguistic Category Model (LCM) to characterize passages that our study participants have written about their significant others in an effort to determine correlation between how long-distance relationship partners describe their SOs and how close, in-person partners think of each other.

I also spent time with Dr. Bowen designing a study that aimed to investigate a possible correlation between construal concreteness in romantic partner description and the way the partner was presented to a participant (e.g., via a picture, their name, or the term “my romantic partner”).

Beyond the Bowen lab, my primary research interests are in the fields of music and cognition, and I’m currently planning a study whose goal is to examine a causal relationship, if any, between sight reading (a musical phenomenon by which someone can read a piece of music play it without prep time) and executive function.

What else do I do at school?

I work in the Johns Hopkins Undergraduate Admissions office in both volunteer and paid capacities. I lead campus tours, train new tour guides, answer phones, welcome people to campus, coordinate visitors, and co-lead prospective student information sessions. I am well-versed in public speaking, working with large groups of people, and promoting persuasive positive honesty.

I spent much of the past summer planning and executing the Johns Hopkins undergraduate New Student Orientation social programs. I organized events as small as 50-person ice cream socials and as large as festivals for the entire 1500-person freshman class.

Finally, I served as a development team member and student counselor for Camp Kesem, a volunteer organization for kids whose parents have been afflicted with cancer in some way (their parent has it now, is in remission, or has died from the disease). We raised between $40,000 and $50,000/year to provide a completely free summer camp for said children.

What do I do outside school?

Me with the Steinway Series at Silo Hill board (and our soloist from September, tenor Issachah Savage)

Outside of academia, I’m heavily interested in music. I graduated from The Juilliard School’s Pre-College program in 2016 having studied violin there from 6th-12th grade. I serve as the second-chair first violinist in the Hopkins Symphony Orchestra, and I won its bi-annual concerto competition in 2018, performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64, in its entirety.

In 2018 I was elected to the board of Steinway Series at Silo Hill, a non-profit concert series located in Phoenix, MD, that hosts world-class classical musicians for concerts to raise money for Parkinson’s Disease research. I’m the youngest person in the organization’s history to be elected to the board, and I (perhaps accordingly) serve as the organization’s director of social media and outreach.

I’m also a collector/archivist of vintage license plates and their history. I specialize in Colorado county-issued plates and Michigan plates and their ever-changing county codes throughout the 40s through the 70s. I’m currently trying to assemble a 1936 Colorado license plate set that includes one plate from every county. I also run the Jackson County, CO license plate archive, which can be accessed via the link at the top of the page.

And lastly, some basic info about me…

I’m originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan, but my family moved to Pennsylvania in late 2009 in part because my father was transferred for work and also because my brother and I began studying double bass and violin (respectively) at The Juilliard School’s Pre-College Program.

I studied violin at Juilliard for seven years with Catherine Cho and Ann Setzer before graduating in 2016. I attended Pennsylvania Leadership Charter School’s University Scholars Program in West Chester, PA for eighth grade and high school.

I love road tripping, interior design, and discussing the geeky aspects of music theory in popular songs (ask me about “FFC Music Critique”). My favorite food is fresh mango, my favorite color is teal, my favorite composer (currently) is Steve Reich, my favorite key signature is C# minor, and if I could daily drive any vehicle in the world, I would choose a Subaru Outback sport.

Have questions or comments? Please contact me!

My resume and CV are attached below, and my contact information is on the sidebar. Thanks for visiting my website, and please come back soon!

Best regards,