MY MISSION
I am passionate about helping individuals to manage their mental health. To this end, I seek to understand the cognitive, motivational, and physiological mechanisms that shape individuals’ thoughts, perceptions, and behaviors. My goal is to use this understanding to help:
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Overcome the stigma of mental conditions
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Improve current (neuro)cognitive tests
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Personalize and develop treatments
I am pursuing a multidisciplinary approach by combining theories and tools from computational psychiatry, mathematical psychology, cognitive and social-cognitive neuroscience, and behavioral economics.
SHORT PROFILE
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Researcher and Entrepreneur with profound experience in both academia and industry
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Consultant for (neuro)cognitive testing, eye-tracking, and computational modeling
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Neurocognitive psychologist who seeks to make a real-world impact with interdisciplinary research in computational psychiatry, and model-based cognitive neuroscience
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Behavioral economist who advocates to complement existing cognitive tests with the experimental study of social characteristics
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Hands-on expertise in statistics, computational modeling, machine learning, and multilevel (hierarchical) Bayesian, Bayesian, and traditional (frequentist) modeling
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more than 7 years of experience in experimental research (self-developed cognitive and social cognitive laboratory tasks) including own publications
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more than 4 years of experience supporting clinical trials (applied computational psychiatric tools to cognitive tasks of multiple clinical interventions as well as performed classical analysis, such as linear mixed modeling, to assess treatment effects)
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Entrepreneurial spirit with 10-years industry experience in the financial sector and consulting
Out of clutter, find simplicity.
From discord, find harmony.
In the middle of difficulty
lies opportunity.
- Albert Einstein
MY SCIENTIFIC MINDSET
Interdisciplinary cooperation: I am a strong advocate of collaborations and interdisciplinary openness and tolerance. I appreciate the diversity each team member brings. I am eager to overcome barriers that sometimes arise because different research disciplines use different jargon and methods of data collection and analysis.
Problem orientation: My mission and subsequent research questions are my motivating factors. I rely extensively on the literature and on collaborations to answer my research questions, and I build my methodological expertise around them. My pursuit of further knowledge and education has placed me in collaboration with many different scientists. For instance, I have worked with biostatistician Dr. Helena C. Kraemer, to combine computational model parameters with her moderator analysis strategy, which was specifically developed to determine which treatment will be optimally suited for which group of patients. I have also worked with Dr. Roger Ratcliff, an expert in diffusion decision modeling, to assess the effects of aging on cognitive flexibility, and how to improve neurocognitive testing for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorders (ADHD). I also conducted research and gained knowledge in experimental and behavioral economics at the University of Zurich with Dr. Roberto Weber and Dr. Ernst Fehr.
NEWS
January 2023
Grateful for the support by the prestigious postdoctoral fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation - finally we can start some translational and transdiagnostic research!
December 2022
I am thrilled to announce that I have been awarded the prestigious T32 Fellowship for Computational Psychiatry. What an honor - I am very grateful!
January 2021
Check out my radio interview with WOSU radio station on how computational psychiatry can help to understand attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) - thank you for this great opportunity
December 2020
Press release of my latest publication in Psychological Bulletin (how can we improve neurocognitive testing using computational models?): Link