Sacha Altay is doing his PhD in cognitive science at the Institut Jean Nicod of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Fascinated by apparently irrational beliefs and behaviors, he works with Hugo Mercier on the role of epistemic reputation in communication and the cognitive mechanisms underlying information transmission and evaluation. More»
Dr. Benjamin M. Friedman is the William Joseph Maier Professor of Political Economy, and formerly Chairman of the Department of Economics, at Harvard University. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1972. Dr Friedman’s newest book is Religion and the Rise of Capitalism – a fundamental reassessment of the foundations of current-day economics, showing how religious thinking has shaped economic thinking ever since the beginnings of modern Western economics and how this influence continues to be relevant today especially in the United States. His two other general interest books have been The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth (Knopf) and Day of Reckoning: The Consequences of American Economic Policy Under Reagan and After (Random House). More»
Dr. Sander van der Linden is Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge and Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab. His research interests center around the psychology of human judgment, communication, and decision-making, including social norms and networks, attitudes and polarization, reasoning about evidence, and the public understanding of risk and uncertainty. More»
Dr. Cécile Sarabian is a Postdoctoral researcher in Cognitive Ecology at Kyoto University. She investigates parasite avoidance behaviors and their effectiveness in non-human primates and other animals via field and lab experimentation/observations. She is generally interested in the origins of hygiene and disgust in humans and in the potential applications of disgust into the field of Conservation. More»
Dr. David Buss is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. He’s one of the founders of the field of evolutionary psychology. His primary research focus is on strategies of human mating. He’s the author of many books, including The Evolution of Desire, and the first textbook in Evolutionary Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind. His most recent book is When Men Behave Badly: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault. More»
Dr. Christian Pieter Hoffmann is Professor of Communication Management and Political Communication at the Institute of Communication and Media Studies at the University of Leipzig, Germany. In addition, he is responsible for teaching in the field of political communication in cooperation with the Institute for Political Science. Dr. Hoffmann is a lecturer at the University of St. Gallen, Singapore Management University, Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz and the University of Applied Sciences Zurich. His research interests include strategic communication management, financial communication and political communication – with a particular focus on the challenges and opportunities provided by new media. More»
Dr. Scott A. Small is the Director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Columbia University, where he is the Boris and Rose Katz Professor of Neurology. He is appointed in the Departments of Neurology, Radiology, and Psychiatry. With an expertise in Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive aging, Dr. Small’s research focuses on the hippocampus, a circuit in the brain targeted by these and other disorders, notably schizophrenia. He has pioneered the development and application of high-resolution functional MRI techniques that can pinpoint parts of the hippocampus most affected by aging and disease. His lab then uses this information to try to identify causes of these disorders. Over the years, his lab has used this ‘top-down’ approach to isolate pathogenic mechanisms related to Alzheimer’s disease, cognitive aging, and schizophrenia. More recently, his lab has used this insight for drug discovery and to develop novel therapeutic interventions, some of which are currently being tested in patients. He is the author of Forgetting: The Benefits of Not Remembering. More»
Dr. Jessica Thompson is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Yale University. Dr. Thompson specializes in human evolution, and especially those aspects that can be revealed through the analysis of ancient animal bones found at archaeological sites (zooarchaeology). She leads the Malawi Ancient Lifeways and Peoples Project in Malawi, central Africa, where she has maintained a field site since 2009. This multidisciplinary work combines archaeological science, evolutionary theory, and hunter-gatherer ethnography to develop and interpret the first cultural and paleoenvironmental chronologies in the region that span the transition from the last Ice Age. Her other research, based on collaborative work in Ethiopia, targets the opposite end of the archaeological record, at its origin in the Pliocene. Dr. Thompson is PI of the Osteoarchaeology Laboratory at Yale University. More»
Crystal Lee is a PhD candidate at the History / Anthropology / Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS) program at MIT, a researcher at the Visualization Group in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), and a Fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Her research focuses on how people interpret and make data visualizations. She also thinks a lot about the relationship between technology and disability, and she loves talking about mixed methods research that combines humanistic questions with data science and critical cartography. In her work as a Digital Teaching Fellow at Harvard, she created a curriculum to integrate digital mapping and visualization into the history of science. Previously, she was a visiting research scientist at the European Commission, and she graduated with high honors from Stanford University. More»
Dr. Michelle Montague is Professor of Philosophy at The University of Texas at Austin. She is interested in philosophy of mind and metaphysics. Dr. Montague is the editor of Non-Propositional Intentionality, Cognitive Phenomenology, and Philosophical Writings by P.F. Strawson (co-edited with Galen Strawson). She is the author of The Given: experience and its content. More»
