Principal Investigator
Dobromir (Doby) Rahnev, Ph.D.
E-mail: rahnev@psych.gatech.edu
Research Interests: Perceptual decision making, prefrontal cortex, metacognition, computational models of cognition
About me: I enjoy soccer, hiking, juggling, and math puzzles.
Postdocs
Marshall Green
E-mail: marshall.l.green [at] outlook [dot] com
Research Interests: I am interested in perceptual decision-making and metacognition. To study these topics, I combine psychophysics and computational modeling to test and develop theories of perception. My recent work has been focused on motion and orientation perception, summary statistics, and visual confidence.
About me: I earned my Ph.D. in Cognitive Science from Mississippi State University where I researched visual perception and visual working memory. I am married to a wonderful woman named Jenn, who is a talented graphic designer. My hobbies include playing violin, cooking, photography, and hiking.
Yi Gao
E-mail: yi.gao0525@outlook.com
Research Interests: I am interested in understanding human visual perception, including various visual effects such as adaptation, perceptual learning and ensemble coding. I am also interested in how other sensory modalities interact with vision.
About me: I like playing Werewolf games and Catan. I also love watching professional gamers playing PUBG Esports.
Medha Shekhar
E-mail: medha@gatech.edu
Research Interests: I study how humans make perceptual and confidence judgements using a combination of behavioural experiments and computational modelling. Currently, I am working on testing CNNs on perceptual tasks to understand how their behaviour and internal representations compare to humans.
About me: I love to read and collect all kinds of books, especially fiction. I also enjoy running and watching horror movies.
Graduate Students
Sean Zheng
E-mail: seann0820@gmail.com
Research Interests: I am interested in how people become aware of themselves and the external environment. I am also interested in how people metacognitively monitor and control their own decision-making processes. I would like to use behavioural experiments, multimodal neuroimaging methods and computational models to answer these questions of interests.
About me: I love coffee, reading, Lego, stand-up comedy, Peanuts (comic), Japanese TV dramas, and Arsenal football club.
Kai Xue
E-mail: kxue33@gatech.edu
Research Interests: I am interested in how visual system is able to perceive information and make decisions. I want to integrate computational modeling, neuroimaging techniques, and behavioral experimentation to understand how visual system understands and reasons actions.
About me: I play the piano and the flute. For sports, I play table tennis.
Herrick Fung
E-mail: herrickfung@gatech.edu
Research Interests: I’m fascinated by the binding problem of visual perception and consciousness, as well as the neural mechanisms underlying subjective experiences. In my previous studies, I delved into understanding the attentional mechanism and binding processes involved in human face recognition and ensemble processing. Currently, my focus is on projects aiming at enhancing metacognition and how various stimulus properties impact perceptual accuracy and confidence.
About me: I have a strong preference for indoor activities, primarily because I tend to sweat a lot. Among my favourites are playing and composing music, diving into textbooks (which cultivated my interest in cognitive neuroscience at the very beginning), and solving Rubik’s cube and Sudoku.
Bogeng Song
E-mail: bsong91@gatech.edu
Research Interests: I am interested in visual perception and perceptual decision-making. I want to use machine learning models, especially deep learning methods, as tools to understand the brain and mind. My project integrates behavioral and computational modeling approaches to study people's perception and decision making.
About me: I love reading, I double major Chinese Language and Literature and Psychology when I was in college. I like playing and watching basketball (OKC Thunder), I like FPS gaming (Counter-Strike), I love Broadway show, old Rock music and Asian pop music (Vaundy, New Jeans).
Alish Dipani
E-mail: alishdipani@gatech.edu
Research Interests: I am interested in understanding the computational principles and learning algorithms leading to generalization in natural and artificial agents, especially their cognitive and visual systems. Towards this, I collect neuroimaging and behavioural data from various populations, and build deep learning models. At Georgia Tech, I am a CoCo Fellow, funded by the Center of Excellence in Computational Cognition.
About me: Outside of research, I like teaching, mentoring, open-source development, cooking, traveling, and spending time with my cats.
Undergraduate Research Assistants
Girish Jayakumar
E-mail: gjayakumar3@gatech.edu
Research Interests: I am deeply involved in bridging machine learning, autonomous systems, and human-computer interaction to enhance real-world applications and decision-making processes. Currently, I am focused on the resilience of neural networks against adversarial attacks. My project investigates the robustness of RTNet, a newly developed ANN that generates stochastic decisions and human-like response time (RT) distributions, and its capabilities compared to standard neural networks.
About me: I am a computer science student at Georgia Tech with concentrations in Intelligence and HCI. Over the years, I have visited over 20 national parks, and I enjoy hiking and engaging in outdoor activities. In my spare time, I love to exercise, read, watch movies, play tennis and racquetball, and volunteer to help Atlanta-based nonprofits.
Ananya Jain
E-mail: ananyaj@gatech.edu
Research Interests: Artificial Neural Networks. As part of my current project at the lab, I am working on training a convolutional neural network to learn quantity estimation tasks on perceptual data like length of a line or number of dots in a grid.
About me: I am a second-year student at Georgia Tech studying computer science with a specialization in artificial intelligence and human computer interaction. I love hiking, sailing, astronomy, and photography!
Sruthi Medepalli
E-mail: smedepalli6@gatech.edu
Research Interests: I’m fascinated by computational neuroscience, and how we model decision-making processes in the brain through neural networks. I’m currently developing an ANN to mimic the performance of human subjects on a color numerosity task while analyzing which method of generating confidence in machines most accurately aligns with human thought processes.
About me: I’m a first-year computer science major at Georgia Tech with a concentration in intelligence and people. I enjoy watching and reading thrillers, listening to all kinds of music, and running!
Sarayu Ayyalasomayajula
E-mail: sarayuayyala@gatech.edu
Research Interests: I am interested in perceptual decision-making and understanding human visual perception. Currently, I'm working on a project using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to identify how the motor cortex influences response bias.
About me: I'm a second-year Neuroscience major at Georgia Tech on the pre-med track. I enjoy playing tennis competitively, reading, and traveling!
Michaela Bocheva
E-mail: mbocheva02 [at] gmail [dot] com
Research Interests: I use various psychophysical and computational approaches to study perceptual representations as a statistical inference problem. My interests include efficient coding, probabilistic perception, and perceptual uncertainty at the sensory and decision levels.
About me: I enjoy reading, oil painting, theater, films, and MMORPG games.
Satyapragnya Kar
E-mail: satyakar2019@gmail.com
Research Interests: I have a keen interest in artificial intelligence and machine learning allied domains including generative AI, natural language processing, computer vision and reinforcement learning. Topics of computer science including data mining, computer networks, database management and algorithms also excite me a lot. My current project involves correlating visual perceptual learning by different CNN architectures and the human brain.
About me: I'm a rising senior from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi with a major in Materials Engineering and a minor in Computer Science and Engineering. I'm a travel enthusiast and also regularly play and follow soccer. Philately and reading are two activities I generally resort to during my spare time. I also actively indulge in website and application development and competitive programming.
Khushi Sharma
E-mail: sharma@gatech.edu
Research Interests: I’m curious about the relationship between mental imagery and perception/cognition, specifically with regards to interpersonal variance in stable images and the possible identification of subject matter and specificity in MRI scans. My current work in the lab focuses on idiosyncratic differences between individuals as a function of perceptive and cognitive schematics, and previously, I worked on identifying discrepancies between AlexNet instances initialized with similar parameters.
About me: I’m currently in my final year of my computer science degree, with a focus on mathematical theory and modeling and simulation. Outside of my studies and research, I’m a huge fan of drawing, making music, and finding obscure textbooks, papers, and online blogs!
Leah Wu
E-mail: lwu334@gatech.edu
Research Interests: I am interested in metacognition but specifically how humans are able to monitor and understand their own perceptual decisions. For instance, this involves examining the mechanisms behind self-assessment of accuracy as well as investigating the cues individuals use to judge confidence in what is perceived. Currently, I am working on a project that investigates how different confidence measurements relate to one another and whether these measurements are correlated.
About me: I am an undergraduate Neuroscience major at Georgia Tech with intentions of entering the medical field. Outside of academics, I enjoy traveling and spending time with friends and family.
Catherine Jiao
E-mail: catjiao@gatech.edu
Research Interests: I'm passionate about exploring human-computer interaction and decision-making processes, with a particular focus on behavioral economics. My research interests lie in understanding irrational human behavior and how it influences decision-making in real-world scenarios.
About me: I'm an Industrial Engineering major at Georgia Tech with a minor in Psychology. Outside of research, I love noodles, hanging out with my friends, and trying new things!
Lab Alumni
Ji Won Bang: Postdoc (2015-2017). Next position: postdoc at New York University.
Jiwon Yeon: Ph.D. student (2016-2021). Next position: postdoc at Stanford University.
Medha Shekhar: Ph.D. student (2016-2021). Next position: postdoc at University College London.
Farshad Rafiei: Ph.D. student (2016-2022). Next position: machine learning scientist at IQVIA.
Samuel Goldstein: Ph.D. student (2020-2022). Next position: data scientist at World Wide Technology.
Johan Nakuci: Postdoc (2020-2023). Next position: Postdoctoral Fellow at Army Research Laboratory (ARL).
Nadia Haddara: Ph.D. student (2018-2024).