Team

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.

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.

Luca Momigliano

Student Assistant

Luca is an MSc student in Governance of Sustainability at Leiden University. As part of a KIEM-funded project, he is working to strengthen sustainability collaboration across the university and support the implementation of ideas from the Think Green, Act Green Manifesto across education, research, governance and operations.

Alumni

Philippa Johnson, postdoc 2023-2025

Students

Annika Frach, MSc student 2021
Chrysoula Papadimakopoulou, BSc student 2021
Leon Hommerich, ACP MSc student 2021-2023
Felice Wulfse, ACP MSc student 2022
Adrian Nichici, RM MSc student 2023
Kasia Kruk, ACP MSc student 2023
Sonja Förster, RM MSc student 2023
Camilla Ucheoma Enwereuzor, RM MSc student & SA 2023
Amelie Halstenberg, MSc student 2023
Dorota Moravčíková, Honours BSc student 2024-2025
Cemre Uçkan, RM MSc student 2024
Eveline de Bie, RM MSc student 2024
Lorenzo van Hoorde, RM MSc student 2024
Alisa Wirtnik, intern 2024
Lucija Sorić, RM MSc student 2025-2026

Collaborators

Neuroscience

Climate psychology