Principal Investigator
Tobias Egner, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Psychology & Neuroscience
Tobias received a B.Sc. in Psychology from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and then went on to earn his Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience at Imperial College London, University of London. After that, he undertook postdoctoral research at the Functional MRI Research Center at Columbia University in New York City before working as a Research Assistant Professor in the Cognitive Neurology & Alzheimer's Disease center at Northwestern University in Chicago. In summer 2009, he joined the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University.
For more information, download Tobias Egner's CV.
Graduate Students
Raphael Geddert
Raphael graduated from UC Davis in 2017, where he received a B.S. In Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior and a B.A. in Psychology. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience under the supervision of Drs. Tobias Egner and John Pearson.
Raphael is interested in how cognitive control demand expectations are learned in and transferred between environments, and how competing expectations interact with each other. He plans to explore these topics using behavioral, fMRI, and computational modeling techniques.
Candice Wang
Candice graduated from Pomona College in 2019 with a B.A. in Neuroscience and Religious Studies. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience under the supervision of Drs. Tobias Egner and Alison Adcock.
Candice is interested in how control contexts and motivation influence event perception and subsequent memory. She plans to investigate these topics using various methodologies (behavioral, modeling, fMRI).
Ricardo Torres
Ricardo studied psychology in the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile. He later earned a M.Sc. in Neuroscience from the Universidad de Chile. Currently he is a Cognitive Neuroscience PhD student interested in episodic memory, cognitive control and counterfactual thinking.
Jim Zhang
Jim graduated from Rice University in 2022 with a B.A. in Neuroscience and a B.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience, working with Dr. Tobias Egner, Dr. Simon Davis, and Dr. John Pearson.
Jim is currently interested in how subjective experiences arise from neural activity, the application of stimulation (TMS) to improve semantic memory in MCI adults, and the influence of episodic memory on cognitive control levels. He plans to study these questions using behavioral, fMRI, modeling, and TMS techniques.
Undergraduate Students
Brooke Sevchik
Brooke is a junior who intends to major in neuroscience and minor in Spanish.
She is interested in how mental and neurological states impact behavioral responses with regards to cognitive control, and wants to explore the application of neuroscience to exercise and nutrition.
Jessica Shoemaker
Jessica is a class of 2024 undergraduate majoring in Psychology and minoring in Spanish.
She is interested in the general cognitive processes of both humans and animals, including memory, attention, and emotion. She plans to go to graduate school after Duke.
Alumni
Eva Gjorgieva - Management Consultant, McKinsey & Company
Audrey Liu - Postdoctoral Fellow, George Washington University
Jasmin Stein - Ph.D. student, TU Dresden, Dresden, DE
Peter Whitehead - Associate Director, Data Science, Merck, USA
Sam Verschooren - Postdoctoral Scholar, Humboldt University, Berlin, DE
Tanya Wen - Research Neuroscientist, Naval Health Research Center, San Diego, USA
Nick Brosowsky - Assistant Professor, University of Manitoba, Canada
Rafael Cruz - Data Scientist, UW Madison, USA
Christina Bejjani - Senior Data Scientists, ChowNow, USA
Jack Dolgin - Graduate Student, Washington University in St. Louis, USA
Ziwei Zhang - Graduate Student, University of Chicago, USA
Yu-Chin Chiu - Assistant Professor, Purdue University, USA
Anthony Sali - Assistant Professor, Wake Forest University, USA
Amelia M. Abbott-Frey - MD Candidate, Columbia University Medical School, USA
Hanna Oh Descher - Senior Data Scientist, Apple, USA
Paul Muhle-Karbe - Postdoctoral Scholar, Oxford University, UK & Stanford University, USA
Jiefeng Jiang - Assistant Professor, University of Iowa, USA
Emma Wu Dowd - Senior Research Program Coordinator, The University of Texas at Austin, USA
Anastasia Kiyonaga - Assistant Professor, University of California, San Diego, USA
Franziska Korb - Postdoctoral Scholar & Lecturer, Dresden University of Technology, Germany
Joseph King - Postdoctoral Scholar, Dresden University of Technology, Germany
Darinka Trübutschek - Postdoctoral Scholar, Oxford University, UK