Team

Tobias Hauser google scholar ORCID

Principal Investigator | Tübingen & UCL

Tobias is a full Professor of Computational Psychiatry and the head of the Developmental Computational Psychiatry group. He wants to understand how neurocognitive mechanisms can go awry and lead to mental health problems.

 

Meng Gao

Lab manager | Tübingen

Meng is currently training to become a psychotherapist. Meng holds a PhD in cognitive neuroscience and is deeply fascinated by the complexities of the brain, particularly its functions and malfunctions in psychiatric conditions. Meng is excited to see new scientific advancements that bridge the gap between research and clinical practice, which contribute to a deeper understanding of the brain, and can lead to more effective interventions and treatments for those affected by mental health disorders.

 

Susan Fischer

Research coordinator | Tübingen

Susan runs both the DevComPsy lab and Peter Dayan’s group at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics and the University of Tübingen administratively, focussing on people, finance, operations, grants and strategy. She has previously worked in different research and higher education institutions both in Germany and United Kingdom (Max Planck UCL Centre, London; Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, London; MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology at King’s College London; German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Dresden) and has gained a vast knowledge and invaluable experience of the workings of large undertakings. Susan is passionate about new work concepts and diversity, equity and inclusion and is heavily involved in the coordination of the CaCTüS Internship programme and a campus-wide Diversity Seminar Series.

 

Karen Hoang

Clinical research coordinator | UCL

 

Aleya Marzuki

Postdoc | Tübingen

Aleya is interested in understanding the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying psychiatric disorders, particularly obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). In the DCP, they will research how symptoms and associated cognitive processes fluctuate over time, as well as how decision-making is impacted by specific features of OCD (e.g., inflated responsibility and not-just-right-experiences).

 

Magda del Rio

Postdoc | UCL

Magda is interested in the underpinnings of belief updating and their relation to psychiatric symptoms. In the DCP lab, she focuses on the mechanisms of information sampling in OCD using MEG and behavioural data.

 

Frank Hezemans google scholar ORCID

Postdoc | Tübingen

Frank aims to use computational modelling of cognition to help predict psychiatric problems across development. He is particularly interested in identifying computational principles that accurately characterise multiple domains of cognitive function, and can potentially help reveal risk for psychopathology.

 

George Tertikas

Postdoc | UCL

George has a medical degree and a research background on exploratory behaviour. His current research interests revolves around anxiety-related disorders (e.g., obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)) and how they influence decision-making as evaluated through computational modelling. In the DPC, he will be using neuroimaging to understand the neural signatures of learning in the brain.

 

Lenard Dome website google scholar ORCID

Postdoc | Tübingen

Lenard is currently developing a computational modelling toolbox to help model comparisons on large data sets in developmental computational psychiatry. Lenard's primary research focuses on modelling human heterogeneity and creating new and innovative frameworks for large-scale relative model comparisons. In addition, he has done effect-centric research on when intelligent systems fail with a particular focus on the inverse base-rate effect - an irrational effect of non-uniform generalization of learned experience.

 

Ehsan Kakaei google scholar ORCID

Postdoc | Tübingen

Ehsan uses novel real-time fMRI, pupil measurements, and computational modelling to study how fluctuations in brain activity, specifically in Noradrenergic midbrain system, predict “inconsistent” decision making in humans.

 

Kenza Kadri website

Postdoc | Tübingen

Kenza’s research interests span decision neurosciences, psychology and modelling. In the DCP, she will investigate how endogenous dopamine fluctuation impacts decision-making. She previously discussed the link between the connectivity profile of the striatum and impulsivity in Humans and how it relates to Credit Assignment variability (under the supervision of Dr Elsa Fouragnan, University of Plymouth) and how impulsivity.

 

Alisa Loosen google scholar ORCID

Postdoc | New York City

Alisa is a postdoctoral fellow at the Developmental Computational Psychiatry Lab and the Computational Psychiatry Centre at Mount Sinai NYC (Gu Lab). She completed her PhD in computational psychiatry at UCL (supervised by Tobias) as part of the Comp2Psych Programme. Her doctoral research focused on learning and decision-making alterations in individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Alisa's current postdoctoral research investigates the neurocomputational mechanisms of reward and effort learning, utilizing intracranial recordings in humans.

 

Tricia Seow website google scholar ORCID

Postdoc | UCL

Tricia’s research interests lie in understanding the role of decision making and metacognition in compulsivity, a subcomponent of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) that has transdiagnostic relevance. In the DCP, she will further investigate neurocognitive mechanisms that predict the success or failure of standardised cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) for OCD, with the ultimate goal of understanding mechanisms underlying OCD and improving CBT outcomes.

 

Xin Sui

PhD student | Tübingen

Xin is a PhD student at the International Max Planck Research School: the mechanisms of mental function and dysfunction (IMPRS-MMFD), co-supervised by Tobias and Peter Dayan. She has a BSc in Mathematics and Economics from the College of William and Mary and an MSc in Neural Information Processing from the University of Tübingen. She's interested in the computational mechanisms of transdiagnostic symptoms associated with anxiety and depression (e.g. rumination and worry), and more broadly prevention and treatment of mental health conditions. Her current project focuses on modeling optimal risk-sensitive exploration.

 

Claudius Gruner

MD student | Tübingen

Claudius is a medical and cognitive science student at the University of Tuebingen. He is interested in how decision making, memory, language, emotion and motivation work and work together to enable human cognition. In the DCP he is investigating how depression alters decision making in adolescents using computational modelling.

 

Larisa Dinu

PhD student | KCL

Larisa is a rotation PhD student on the LIDo DTP. She has a BSc in Psychology and MSc in Psychiatric Research. Larisa is interested in the early detection and prevention of mental health disorders, heterogeneity and dynamic cognitive changes across the lifespan. In her rotation, she works on developing an ecological sampling method for understanding variability in impulsivity and compulsivity in young people.

 

Sam Hewitt google scholar ORCID

PhD student | UCL

Sam is a PhD student on the UCL-Birkbeck MRC-DTP. He Is interested in how we learn to be motivated toward certain actions, how changes in motivation and decision-making relate to the development of mental health conditions and the brain mechanisms which are important in this. Prior to joining the DCP lab, Sam worked as a Research Assistant in the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge.

 

Alumni

Layla Alsalih | Master student

Marie Bellet | Student Research Assistant

Peter Wolters | Student Research Assistant

Magda Dubois | PhD student

Lucy Lai | Rotation student

Charlotte Monnier | Master student

Vasilisa Skvortsova | Postdoc

Sarah Bühler | Rotation student

Johanna Habicht | Research Assistant

Stan Majewski | Rotation student

Aislinn Bowler | Research Assistant

Benjamin Chew | PhD student

Julia Siembiga | Master student

Maddy Payne | PhD student

Nadescha Trudel | Postdoc