Assistant Professor and Lab Director 

Yuan Chang (YC) Leong is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago. Before coming to Chicago, he received his Ph.D. from Stanford University and postdoctoral training at the UC Berkeley. He received his AB in Psychology from Princeton University. Yuan Chang’s research examines how our goals, desires, and needs shape how we perceive and respond to the physical and social world.

Curriculum vitae

ycleong@uchicago.edu

PhD Student

Jadyn is a doctoral student in the Computational Cognitive Neuroscience program. She graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a B.A. in Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology in 2020. Following graduation, she worked as a full-time research assistant at Northwestern University, where she studied executive functioning in individuals with psychosis-risk and internalizing disorders. Jadyn is broadly interested in the neural mechanisms of cognitive control and decision-making, and how they interact with affect and motivation.

 PhD Student

Ren is a doctoral student in the Computational Cognitive Neuroscience program. Ren earned a B.S. in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science from the University of Arizona in 2021 and worked as the CASNL lab manager from 2021-2023. Broadly, Ren is interested in building computational models to better understand how people reason about and interact with their environments, including how their intuitive physical judgments are influenced by eye-gaze patterns, motivational biases, and ambiguity.

Personal website

 PhD Student (w/ Environmental Neuroscience Lab, Knowledge Lab)

Nakwon is a doctoral student in the Integrative Neuroscience program. He received his M.A. in Computational Social Science at the University of Chicago, and B.A. in Psychology and B.S. in Brain Cognitive Science from Korea University. He is broadly interested in how people compress information about the world, how this information compression shapes our cognitive processes, and how people deliver compressed information to others.

Personal website

 PhD Student (w/ Cognition, Attention and Brain Lab)

Shan is a doctoral student in the Cognition program. She received her B.Phil. in Philosophy from Fudan University in Shanghai, China, where she found her passion in the empirical inquiry of cognitive science. Before UChicago, she studied the interactions between language, culture, and cognition mainly through behavioral measures as a Post-Bacc student and research assistant at Berkeley. Shan is broadly interested in the universals and variations of cognition across contexts, such as affect, language, and culture. 

Personal website

MAPSS Student

Alicia is an MA student in the MAPSS-Psychology Program. She completed a B.S. in Computer Science and a B.A. in Philosophy at UChicago. Alicia is interested in how people build structured expectations (mental models or priors) of the world from experience, how these models are selectively activated during naturalistic information processing, and how inaccurate models can be updated through new experience. In her free time, Alicia enjoys reading, watching nature documentaries, and spending time with her cat, Dale.

Personal website

MAPSS Student

Jiajie is an MA student from the MA Program in the Social Sciences (MAPSS) (psychology track). He received his B.S. in Psychology from East China Normal University in Shanghai, China. His research interests lie in the mechanisms by which social emotions and morality emerge and shape individuals’ understanding of social contexts, as well as the formation and evolution of social relationships within real social networks. Outside of academia, he enjoys playing video games, singing, and reading.

Undergraduate Student

Kannon is an undergraduate at the University of Chicago majoring in Cognitive Science and Music. He is interested computationally modeling the ways in which neurological processes interact with each other. He is also studying the effect that music has on the brain. Outside of the lab, Kannon enjoys ballroom and latin dance, music composition, and rock climbing.

Undergraduate Student

Ryleigh is currently undergraduate at the University of Chicago majoring in Psychology, with a minor in Chemistry. She is interested in looking into the effects of social determinants on an individual’s brain, hopefully using brain-imaging techniques such as fNIRS and fMRI to do so. She has a primary interest on how race and ethnicity can affect a person’s perception or biases. Outside of lab, Ryleigh enjoys hanging with her friends, building Legos, or going on adventure runs around Chicago.

Undergraduate Student

Rulan is an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, majoring in Neuroscience and Political Science. She is interested in the neural correlates of political polarization and, more broadly, in leveraging computational tools within psychological, policy, and political contexts. In her free time, Rulan enjoys playing the piano and working out with friends.

Postdoctoral Researcher

Hannah Kim is a postdoc in the Bakkour Memory and Decision Lab. Her research focuses on how past experience influences cognitive processes like attention, decision making and response selection, with a particular focus on aversive learning.

Hayoung Song Immediate position: Postdoctoral Scholar at Washington University at St. Louis

Jin Ke Immediate position: Lab Manager at the University of Chicago, Current Position: PhD Student at  Yale University

Gao Shan Immediate position: PhD Student at the University of Chicago

Zishan Su Immediate position: Full-time Research Associate at Dartmouth College

Zihan Bai Immediate position: Lab Manager at Yale University

Zhimei Niu Immediate position: Lab Manager at UT Austin, Current Position: Customer Success Associate at MoeGo

Emily Russell Immediate position: Lab Manager at Boston University

Louisa Lyu Immediate Position: PhD Student at UCLA

Su Karaca Immediate Position: Research Assistant at Stanford University

Meriel Doyle Immediate Position: Lab Manager at Brown University

Grace Gautier Immediate Position: MA Student at Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice