Director
Ph.D. (Washington Univ. in St. Louis)
Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience
Department of Neuroscience [profile]
Kavli Institute for Neuroscience [link]
Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program [link]
Cognitive Science [link]
Child Study Center
Vernon B. Mountcastle Distinguished Fellow & Curator-in-Chief of the John F. Fulton Collection at the Olschefskie Institute for the Neurobiology of Knowledge
Associate Research Scientist & Postdoctoral Associates
Amrita Nair, PhD 
Associate research scientist
Ph.D. (Duke University)
Amrita received her PhD from Duke University working with Michael Platt. For her PhD work, she examined how social status is represented in the posterior cingulate cortex. She helps to oversee and manage the lab.
Postdoctoral associate
Ph.D. (University of Arizona)
Philip received his PhD in Neuroscience working with Kati Gothard, where he studied neurophysiological and oxytonergic mechanisms underlying social cognition in the amygdala. Philip is interested in how neuromodulators influence neuronal activity in shaping social behaviors.
Software Engineer
Nicholas Fagan
Software Engineer / Programmer
Yale Class of 2015
Nick received his BS in Psychology (with Distinction, Neuroscience Track) from Yale University. He is interested in computational neuroscience and anything that is computer science related.
Graduate Students
Hannah Weinberg-Wolf, PhD
Graduate student (defended)
Hannah received her BA degree in Biological Basis of Behavior from Johns Hopkins University and her MA degree in Museum Studies from Johns Hopkins University. She then worked at Princeton University before joining the lab. She is interested in how serotonin regulates socio-emotional processing and effortful control in the brain.
Siqi Fan
Graduate student
Siqi received her BS degree in Neuroscience and Mathematics from Vassar College. She has research experience in a variety of organisms, from flies to humans. She is interested in causal mechanisms underlying social cognition and social decision-making.
Graduate student
Megha received her BA degree in Psychology from University of Southern California, followed by receiving her Masters level degree in Neuroscience from University College London. Afterwards, she conducted several fMRI studies in humans, including working with Ifat Levy at Yale University School of Medicine. Megha is interested in neural mechanisms underlying social decision-making in humans. Megha is a Manton Foundation Fellow.
Graduate student
Prabaha received his integrated BS and MS degrees in Biology from the Indian Institute of Science. For his research prior to joining the lab, Prabaha worked on understanding neural mechanisms of high-level vision in the inferior temporal cortex. Prabaha is interested in neural mechanisms underlying social behavior.
Olivia Meisner 
Graduate student
Olivia received her BS degree in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology from Emory University. For her research prior to coming to Yale, Olivia studied the development of social attention at Emory and worked on animal models of autism spectrum disorder at MIT. Olivia is interested in neural mechanisms underlying complex social interactions. Olivia is a Gruber Science Fellow, and also a NSF Gradaute Research Fellow.
Graduate student
Yoonseo received her BA degree in Education from Seoul National University and received a prestigious scholarship for her PhD work funded by Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies. Yoonseo is interested in neural computations underlying social decision-making by applying computational models to human fMRI data.
Emily Siff
Graduate student (rotating INP student)
Emily received both her BS degree in Neuroscience and MS degree in Cognitive Science from Brown Univerisity. Before coming to Yale, Emily was involved in statistical / computational modeling of behavior and neural responses underlying cognitive control and communication. Emily is interested in studying neural mechanisms underlying interactive social processes. Emily is a Gruber Science Fellow.
Undergraduate Students
Emma Blue Kirby
Undergraduate researcher
Emma is a Cognitive Science and Applied Mathematics major in the lab interested in neuropharmacological modulations of social cognition.
Alex Jaco
Undergraduate researcher
Alex is an Eli Whitney scholar interested in group decision-making in the lab. Alex is planning to major in Cognitive Science.
Michael Zhou
Undergraduate researcher
Michael is a Neuroscience and Statistics major in the lab interested in modeling behavioral and neural aspects of social gaze dynamics.
Abigail Fortier
Undergraduate researcher
Abigail is a Psychology and Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology double major in the lab interested in autism spectrum disorder.
Beamlak Ashenafi
Undergraduate researcher
Beamlak is a Neuroscience major in the lab interested in neuronal data analysis.
Sorah Park
Undergraduate researcher
Sorah is a Chemistry major in the lab interested in neural bases of complex social interaction. Sorah is a STARS fellow.
Jiatong Li
Undergraduate researcher
Jiatong is a Psychology/Neuroscience major in the lab interested in human social decision-making and behavioral and neural data analyses.
Visiting Fellow
Olga Dal Monte, PhD [google scholar]
[google scholar]Visiting fellow
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
University of Turin, Italy
Olga is a lab alumnus and interested in neurophysiological and neuropharmacological mechanisms underlying social gaze interaction and social decision-making.
Collaborating Members
Feng Xing
Graduate student
Feng is a graduate student in Anirvan Nandy’s lab who is collaborating with us in studying neural basis of natural social bahviors in marmosets.
Amanda Royka
Graduate student
Amanda is a graduate student working with Laurie Santos and Julian Jara-Ettinger, and is collaborating with us to investigate social gaze.
Other Members
Coco Chang
Official lab mascot
Coco is a friendly, loving, and sometimes goofy old english sheep dog. She loves hiking and hanging out with people =)
PhD Dissertations from the lab
Matthew Piva, PhD, Neurobiological bases of social cognition: Investigations from macaques to humans at multiple levels of neuroscience (2018)
Jessica Joiner, PhD, Social information processing in rhesus macaques (2019)
Hannah Weinberg-Wolf, PhD, Serotonin and social competency (2021)