Jared Hotaling
Dr. Jared Hotaling is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His research uses techniques from experimental psychology and computational modeling to develop and test theories of judgment and decision making. He is particularly interested in roles that attention, memory, and learning play in people’s choices. With this approach, Jared aims to situate decision making within the boarder context of cognition and bounded rationality. He earned his PhD in Cognitive Science and Psychology from Indiana University. Before arriving at UIUC, Jared spent time as a Research Scientist at the Center for Economic Psychology at the University of Basel, and as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of New South Wales.
Postdocs
Babak Hemmatian
Babak received his bachelor’s degree in Clinical Psychology from University of Tehran, Iran, after which he obtained an M.S. in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Cognitive Science from Brown University (2015-2021). He is currently a Beckman Postdoctoral Fellow at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. He studies how social information is internalized and negotiated with other community members, testing psychological theories with AI-aided text analysis, neuroimaging, and behavioral experiments. He is particularly interested in the causal and narrative frames for organizing and communicating information. His current project in collaboration with the CDM lab examines the relative persuasiveness of anecdotal vs. generalized arguments about hot-button topics, using controlled experiments and custom-designed neural networks for text analysis.
Graduate Students
Will Deng
Will is a Ph.D. student in the cognitive division at UIUC. He is interested in both how people make complex decisions and in connection to how people perceive and remember about themselves and the rest of the world. As a result, he is interested in a combination of research methodologies such as behavioral research, computational modeling, and electrophysiology. The main goal of his research is to test and develop new cognitive theories and models that encompass a diverse population and linking perception, comprehension with decision making. In his free time, Will enjoys playing the Violin, working on his car, exploring local breweries, and refining his espresso-making techniques.
Jordan Navarro
Jordan is a first-year Ph.D. student working in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is broadly interested in behavioral economics, decision-making, decision theory, game theory, judgment, logic, moral psychology, and neuroeconomics. He obtained a B.A. in both Cognitive Science and Philosophy from Carleton College. As an undergraduate, he worked in the Language and Cognition Research Lab under the supervision of Dr. Mija Van Der Wege.
Qidi Man
Qidi is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Quantitative Psychology within the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests focus on understanding how people navigate complex decisions and utilizing computational models to explain human decision behavior. Additionally, she has an interest in the application of psychometrics to measure individual differences and improve personnel selection and career decision making. Qidi earned her B.S. in Faculty of Psychology at Beijing Normal University and her M.S. in Educational Psychology within the College of Education at UIUC.
Trung Le
Trung is a Ph.D. student in Quantitative Psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on understanding processes involved in decision making and the various factors influencing judgments. Additionally, he is interested in psychometrics, particularly in developing methods to optimize test construction processes and enhance the accuracy of assessments of individuals’ abilities and traits. He hopes to integrate these two areas of interest in his future work. In his free time, he enjoys reading comics and playing games like chess and TFT. Trung obtained a B.A in Psychology and a B.S in Data Science & Statistics from Miami University in Ohio.
Luke Sztajnkrycer
Luke is a Psychology Ph.D. student in the Cognitive Area at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. His research interests include sequential decision-making, foresight, learning and information foraging, and tool use. He hopes to eventually combine these domains of research to design tools that support and enhance peoples’ decision making abilities. In his free time, Luke enjoys biking, skating, martial arts, and video games; you can frequently find him practicing (or rambling about) Kendo or Iaido. Luke obtained a B.S. in Cognitive Science – Machine Learning and a B.S. in Joint Mathematics-Economics from the University of California, San Diego.
Undergraduates
Eli Chhea
Eli is a senior undergraduate psychology student with a focus in clinical/community psychology, whom is also pursuing a minor in statistics. He is interested in looking further into how perceptions of group similarity and group differences can effect behavior, thoughts, and interpersonal dynamics. The main goal of his current research is to continue to gather data for our current study on the Anatomy of Discourse, and following that to run his own experiment for his senior level thesis. As an undergraduate he had worked in the Etiology of Personality and Individual Characteristics (EPIC) Lab run by Dr. D. A. Briley and Dr. Jaime Derringer. He was supervised by Doctoral Candidate Eleanor Junkins during his time at the EPIC Lab.
Simon Wesenberg
Simon Wesenberg is a junior at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign studying economics and psychology. He is interested in decision-making, learning, microeconomics, and game theory. Simon is currently assisting with research projects while working on his bachelor’s honors thesis in the Department of Psychology.