Anne Urai
Assistant Professor
As a cognitive neuroscientist, I investigate how the brain transforms sensory information into useful decisions, and how such decisions change with experience. In my research, I combine psychophysics and computational modeling of behavioural data with electrophysiological recordings in humans and rodents. I am passionate about team science, open science and reproducibility, diversity and equality in academia (and beyond), and sustainable academic practices in face of the climate crisis.
In my doctoral research in the lab of Tobias Donner at the Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf and University of Amsterdam, I investigated how our previous choices bias the way we interpret later information, and how this process is affected by the confidence in our decisions. I did a postdoctoral fellowship in Anne Churchland’s lab at Cold Spring Harbor, as part of the International Brain Laboratory consortium.
I am an Assistant Professor in Leiden University’s Cognitive Psychology Unit. I think (and act) about making academia a better and more future-proof place, as a member of Young Academy Leiden, co-chair of the Dutch Green Young Academy, and with Scientists4FutureNL.
See here for my full CV and my unofficial story.
Philippa Johnson
Postdoc
Philippa’s PhD was based at the University of Melbourne and University of Amsterdam, investigating how the brain compensates for neural delays during motion perception. She works on disentangling engagement states from behavioral and neural data. Her website is here.
Isabelle Hoxha
Postdoc
Isabelle uses disentangled neural networks to uncover trial-to-trial variability in perceptual decision-making. Her website is here.
Magdalena Sabat
Postdoc
Magdalena is interested in using computational approaches to studying the dynamics of social tipping points, jointly supervised by Jan Willem Bolderdijk at the University of Amsterdam. Her website is here.
Fenying Zang
PhD student
Fenying is a PhD student at the Cognitive Psychology Unit. She obtained her master’s degree in Basic Psychology from University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. During her graduate studies, she was interested in audiovisual crossmodal interaction. In her PhD project, she is investigating age-related changes in neural noise.
Robin Vloeberghs
PhD student
Robin is a PhD student with Kobe Desender at KU Leuven, co-supervised by Anne. He studies the interplay between confidence and sequential effects in decision-making using behavioral modeling and EEG.
Sarah Kusch
PhD student
Sarah is a PhD student in environmental psychology at Ghent university under the supervision of Anne Urai and Ruth Krebs. She has a bachelor’s degree in Cognitive Science (University of Osnabrueck, Germany) and a master’s degree in Cognitive Neuroscience (Radboud University, The Netherlands). Her PhD project investigates the potential facilitating role of cognitive effort in pro-environmental behavior.
Lucija Sorić
Research Master student
Lucija is a research master’s student in cognitive neuroscience with a strong interest in applying data science methods to analyze behavioral and neural data. She is analyzing facial video data to explore emotional expressions and decision-making processes.
Alumni
Felice Wulfse, ACP MSc student
Annika Frach, MSc student
Chrysoula Papadimakopoulou, BSc student
Leon Hommerich, ACP MSc student
Adrian Nichici, RM MSc student
Kasia Kruk, ACP MSc student
Sonja Förster, RM MSc student
Camilla Ucheoma Enwereuzor, RM MSc student
Amelie Halstenberg, MSc student
Dorota Moravčíková, Honours BSc students
Cemre Uçkan, RM MSc student
Eveline de Bie, RM MSc student
Lorenzo van Hoorde, RM MSc student
Alisa Wirtnik, intern
Collaborators
- Anne Churchland, UCLA
- Kobe Desender, Leuven
- Tobias Donner, Hamburg
- Ruth Krebs, Ghent
- Alexander Fengler, Brown
- Kianté Fernandez, UCLA
- Clare Kelly, Trinity College Dublin
- Jade Duffy, Trinity College Dublin (visiting PhD student)
- Jan Willem Bolderdijk, University of Amsterdam
CoCoSys lab 