Steve Chang, PhD 
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology [profile]
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
Ph.D. (Washington Univ. in St. Louis)
Visiting Fellow
Olga Dal Monte, PhD
Visiting Fellow (faculty at University of Turin, Italy)
Ph.D. (NIMH & University of Turin)
Olga is interested in neurophysiological and neuropharmacological mechanisms underlying social gaze interaction and social decision-making.
Postdoctoral Associates
Amrita Nair, PhD
Postdoctoral associate
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.
Chengchi Chu, PhD
Postdoctoral associate
Ph.D. (Institute of Neuroscience, National Yang-Ming University)
Chengchi received his PhD in Neuroscience working with Chou Hung, where he studied visual receptive field tuning properties of macaque V1 neurons. Chengchi is interested in computational approaches to understanding the neural mechanisms of social behavior.
Graduate Students
Jessica Joiner
Graduate student in Psychology
Jessica received her BS in Psychology from Sweet Briar College. She then worked at Columbia University before joining the lab. She is interested in how the brain relatively values social and nonsocial rewards in making decisions and theory of mind capacity/limitations in nonhuman animals.
Hannah Weinberg-Wolf
Graduate student in Psychology
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 in Psychology
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.
Megha Chawla
Graduate student in Psychology (Starting in Fall 2019)
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.
Data Analyst
Nicholas Fagan
Data Analyst
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.
Undergraduate Students
Cameron Martel
Undergraduate researcher
Cameron is a Cognitive Science major undergraduate student in the lab interested in the serotonergic regulation of social and cognitive processing.
Emma Blue Kirby
Undergraduate researcher
Emma is a cog sci and applied mathematics major working on a project looking at neuropharmacological modulations of social cognition.
Kacey Fang
Undergraduate researcher
Kacey is a Cognitive Science major undergraduate student in the lab interested human genetic diversity in social cognition. A joint-student collaborating with Avram Holmes and Kevin Anderson.
Affilated Lab Members
Shay Ben Heim
Shay is a postdoctoral associate in Laurie Santo’s lab working on a cross-species project of consciousness.
Anton Gollwitzer
Anton is a graduate student in John Bargh’s lab who is collaborating with us in studying pattern deviancy aversion and social preference.
Erica Ho
Erica is a graduate student in Avram Holmes’ lab who is collaborating with us in studying pattern deviancy aversion and social preference.
Marianne Horn (joint w/ many other labs in the Neuroscience Department)
Marianne is a Research Associate, primarily in the Rakic lab. She helps with surgery preparation and MRI scanning.
Lab Alumni (selected list)
Matthew Piva, Ph.D (grad student)
Weston Pack, PhD (postdoc –> Biomedical industry)
Courtney Turrin (grad student –> Digital marketing industry)
Kayla Velnoskey (grad student –> Data science industry)
Jason Morris (undergrad thesis –> WashU MD program, full scholarship)
Marios Tringides (undergrad thesis –> Duke Univ. Neurobiology PhD program)
Angelica Fuentes (undergrad thesis –> U Illinois Chicago MD program)
Doug Streat (undergrad thesis –> Yale Sch of Public Health program)
Spencer Birney (undergrad research –> Data science industry)
Shamma Ahmed (visiting student from Cornell –> back to Cornell)