Director
Ph.D. (Washington Univ. in St. Louis)
Associate Professor of Psychology and of Neuroscience
Department of Neuroscience [profile]
Wu Tsai Institute [link]
Kavli Institute for Neuroscience [link]
Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program [link]
Cognitive Science [link]
Child Study Center
Associated Faculty Member, Yale MacBrain Resource Center [link]
Vernon B. Mountcastle Distinguished Fellow & Curator-in-Chief of the John F. Fulton Collection at the Olschefskie Institute for the Neurobiology of Knowledge
I am a Korean-American scientist interested in the neural mechanisms underlying complex social behaviors.
Postdoctoral Associates & Associate Research Scientist
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.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Ph.D. (Washington University in St. Louis)
Weikang received his PhD in Neurosciences working with Camillo Padoa-Schioppa, where he studied the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying value guided decision-making in the orbitofrontal cortex. Weikang is interested in studying the neural mechanisms underlying complex social interaction. Weikang is a Wu Tsai Institute postdoctoral fellow co-mentored by Chang, Nandy, and Jadi.
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
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
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 Graduate Research Fellow.
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.
Jamie Masthay
Graduate Student (starting this Fall)
Jamie received her BS degree in Psychology from UConn. She has extensive research experience in investigating how catecholamine systems in the brain regulate motivated behaviors. She is generally interested in the neuropsychopharmacological aspects of complex social behaviors.
Sylvia Blackmore
Graduate Student (starting this Fall)
Sylvia received her BA degree in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College and Psychology from UC Berkeley. She also received her Masters of Science degree from University College London in Dual Brain and Mind Sciences. She has research experience in computational modeling and neuronal data analyses. Sylvia is a Wu Tsai Institute Graduate Student Fellow.
Collaborating Members
Graduate Student (Crockett lab at Princeton)
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.
Feng Xing
Graduate Student (Nandy lab at Yale)
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. Feng is an expert in video-based behavioral tracking of complex behaviors.
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.
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)