I’m a PhD student working primarily with Jamil Zaki at the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. I earned my B.Sc. at the Free University of Berlin. I spent my junior year as a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago, and the following summer as a research assistant at Harvard. My principal interests include why we tend to cynically underestimate how social and prosocial a species we are, as well as testing interventions to reconnect us across social and moral divides. I love to explore new countries, and enjoy food – so long as I don’t have to prepare it. In college, I would often listen to psychology podcasts rather than do my actual psychology coursework. It seemed more fun and engaging, and I often learned much more than in my classes! I now wanted to contribute to this podcasting world myself and co-founded the Stanford Psychology Podcast with Anjie in Spring 2021. It’s been one of the most rewarding experiences in grad school so far to connect with all these brilliant guests, and to build up a podcast team of smart and caring folks in the department. To many more years!

I am a second-year PhD student working in the Stanford Psychophysiology Laboratory. Broadly, I am interested in how people think about and regulate emotions in themselves and others. In my research I use multi-method designs that include physiological measures, behavioral experiments, and natural language processing to answer questions about emotional awareness, interpersonal emotion regulation, and lay beliefs about emotions. In my free time I enjoy running, playing piano, and slowly working my way to getting a pilot’s license! Fun fact about me: my favorite pizza topping is anchovy.

Hi I’m Joseph. I’m a research coordinator with Prof. Hyowon Gweon’s Social Learning Lab at Stanford. I’m interested in moral and cognitive development. I joined the pod because it’s fun to talk to scientists I admire. I also like to learn about interesting yet less well-known phenomena and theories in psychology. Above all, I like that I get to bring the audience along in my explorations. When not doing science I skate, attend live shows and dabble in music improv.

I am a PhD student in the developmental area working with Michael Frank. I am interested in understanding how people decide what to look at and when to stop looking. I received a B.S. in Cognitive Science and Philosophy from Carnegie Mellon University. Before Stanford, I was primarily doing science communication through writing in China. When Eric first brought up the idea of doing a podcast, I was a little bit intimidated: English is not my first language, can I really do it? Well, it turns out the answer is yes! Running the show with Eric and all the other hosts has truly been the most rewarding and fun experience I have in graduate school so far! In my freetime, I like to read, write, netflix, and pet cats!

I am a Lab Manager in the Vision and Perception Neuroscience Lab working with Dr. Kalanit Grill-Spector. Broadly, I am interested in studying how the mind develops, reasons, and sees the world (cognitive development, causality, & vision perception). When not doing research, I enjoy hanging out with my furry friends (2 cats and a puppy!), reading books, and going on coffee walks in the redwoods. I joined the podcast team in September 2021 and am motivated to help make psychology and neuroscience approachable to more people around the globe. I also hope to inspire more people to become interested in psychology by showcasing cool science that researchers do every day. Fun fact: After graduating college, I became a volunteer at the New England Aquarium in Boston, MA, working with adorable Penguins. I could tell you the name of 100 different penguins by looking at the unique color tag on each penguin’s wings. I also got the opportunity to hand feed fish to each penguin twice a day. It was such a cool experience!

I’m a research coordinator in Professor Anthony Wagner’s Stanford Memory Lab, and I find questions about cognition and consciousness riveting. Memory not only animates our experience of the past, but also informs the substance of who we are and our conscious experience of the world. Over the past couple of years, I’ve been working on the Attention, Memory, and Aging Study at Stanford, which focuses on how attentional fluctuations affect our memory performance. My current focus involves relating variance in such performance to white matter integrity and early-stage Alzheimer’s disease pathology. Prior to starting as a research coordinator, I received my B.S. in Human Biology at Stanford. I’m thrilled to be part of the podcast team because science and scientific discoveries can be deeply inspiring and should be widely accessible.