The Lab

Our goal is to understand the causes and consequences of rational and irrational judgment. To do this, we take a highly interdisciplinary approach that combines cognitive science and behavioral economics. We investigate a wide range of decisions using a blend of computational cognitive modeling and behavioral experiments.

Rahul received his undergraduate degree in Economics from the University of British Columbia, followed by an MS in Behavioral and Social Neuroscience and PhD in Computation and Neural Systems from Caltech. He completed his postdoctoral training in the departments of Psychology and Economics at Harvard University before moving to MIT. He is currently the Class of 1958 Career Development Assistant Professor of Marketing at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Outside of the lab, Rahul enjoys reading, taking walks, and smiling in pictures.

Following his PhD at New York University’s Department of Economics, Stefan was a postdoctoral scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics and the Tübingen AI Center. He holds a BSc & MSc in Computational Science and Engineering from ETH Zürich as well as a MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Reed is a PhD student in management science at MIT Sloan. His interests center broadly on the motivations for and barriers to prosocial and cooperative behavior, especially in addressing climate change. Before starting at MIT, Reed completed a BA in economics and political science at Swarthmore College and worked for two years as a research analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Outside of the lab, he enjoys playing volleyball and guitar, spending time in nature, and reading.

Josh is a PhD student in Management Science at MIT Sloan. His academic interests center on understanding the social world from a computational and interdisciplinary perspective, with a particular focus on laws, morality, cooperation and pro-social behavior. He earned a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Commerce (Finance) from the University of Queensland, a Master of Laws from Washington University in St. Louis, and a Graduate Diploma and Advanced Graduate Diploma, both in Psychology, from the University of Melbourne. He has previously worked as a lawyer in Australia, practicing in insolvency litigation, and a data scientist for Cogstate, a company which specializes in the development and administration of computerized cognitive tests. Outside of work, Josh likes travel, exercise, and watching sport, particularly Australian Rules Football.

Roma is a PhD student in Management Science at MIT Sloan. She graduated from the Johns Hopkins University with BAs in Economics, Mathematics, and Applied Mathematics and Statistics. Having an interdisciplinary background, she is interested in developing Bayesian models to explain how people perceive and process information. Outside of the lab, she likes singing, studying Chinese culture, and reading social science literature.

Mani is a visiting PhD student from the University of Tübingen in Germany. His research focuses on using information-theoretic models of lossy compression to explore cost-reward trade-offs in reinforcement learning agents. He is particularly interested in uncovering optimal strategies for balancing resource allocation between representation learning and policy improvement throughout different stages of training.

Yang is currently a PhD student in the Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at Harvard University. Her PhD work focuses on developing an intuitive theory of competence. Prior to grad school, she worked as a full-time research associate with Rahul. Outside of the lab, she enjoys playing piano and doing yoga.

Breakdancing skills not required.

Rachit Dubey - Postdoctoral Research Associate

Hannah Zhang - Undergraduate Research Assistant

Eric Hong - Undergraduate Research Assistant

Shivani Konduru - Undergraduate Research Assistant

Tyler Lawal - Undergraduate Research Assistant

Victoria Lu - Undergraduate Research Assistant

Lydia Schooler - Predoctoral Research Associate

Lion Schulz - Visiting PhD Student

Sari Strizik - Undergraduate Research Assistant

Yang Xiang - Predoctoral Research Associate

Vicky Zheng - Undergraduate Research Assistant