Symbolic Systems
Showing 1-100 of 301 Results
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Maneesh Agrawala
Forest Baskett Professor and Professor, by courtesy, of Electrical Engineering
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsComputer Graphics, Human Computer Interaction and Visualization.
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Russ B. Altman
Kenneth Fong Professor and Professor of Bioengineering, of Genetics, of Medicine, of Biomedical Data Science, Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI and Professor, by courtesy, of Computer Science
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI refer you to my web page for detailed list of interests, projects and publications. In addition to pressing the link here, you can search "Russ Altman" on http://www.google.com/
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Arto Anttila
Associate Professor of Linguistics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsPhonology, morphology, language variation
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Jeremy Bailenson
Thomas More Storke Professor, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and Professor, by courtesy, of Education
BioJeremy Bailenson is founding director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, Thomas More Storke Professor in the Department of Communication, Professor (by courtesy) of Education, Professor (by courtesy) Program in Symbolic Systems, and a Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment. He has served as Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Communication for fifteen years. He earned a B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1994 and a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Northwestern University in 1999. He spent four years at the University of California, Santa Barbara as a Post-Doctoral Fellow and then an Assistant Research Professor.
Bailenson studies the psychology of Virtual and Augmented Reality, in particular how virtual experiences lead to changes in perceptions of self and others. His lab builds and studies systems that allow people to meet in virtual space, and explores the changes in the nature of social interaction. His most recent research focuses on how virtual experiences can transform education, environmental conservation, empathy, and health. He is the recipient of the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford. In 2020, IEEE recognized his work with “The Virtual/Augmented Reality Technical Achievement Award”.
He has published more than 250 academic papers, spanning the fields of communication, computer science, education, environmental science, law, linguistics, marketing, medicine, political science, and psychology. His work has been continuously funded by the National Science Foundation for over 25 years.
His first book Infinite Reality, co-authored with Jim Blascovich, emerged as an Amazon Best-seller eight years after its initial publication, and was quoted by the U.S. Supreme Court. His new book, Experience on Demand, was reviewed by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Nature, and The Times of London, and was an Amazon Best-seller.
He has written opinion pieces for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, CNN, PBS NewsHour, Wired, National Geographic, Slate, The San Francisco Chronicle, TechCrunch, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, and has produced or directed six Virtual Reality documentary experiences which were official selections at the Tribeca Film Festival. His lab has exhibited VR in hundreds of venues ranging from The Smithsonian to The Superbowl. -
Jonathan Berger
Denning Family Provostial Professor
BioJonathan Berger is the Denning Family Provostial Professor in Music at Stanford University, where he teaches composition, music theory, and cognition, and directs the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA).
Jonathan is a 2017 Guggenheim Fellow and a 2016 winner of the Rome Prize.
He was the founding co-director of the Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts (SICA, now the Stanford Arts Institute) and founding director of Yale University’s Center for Studies in Music Technology
Described as “gripping” by both the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, “poignant”, “richly evocative” (San Francisco Chronicle), “taut, and hauntingly beautiful” (NY Times), Jonathan Berger’s recent works deal with both consciousness and conscience. His monodrama, My Lai, toured internationally. The Kronos Quartet's recording was released by Smithsonian/Folkways. His opera, The Ritual of Breath is the Rite to Resist was performed at Lincoln Center in July 2024. Other recent premiers include Hajar Yasini for narrator, string quartet and video (premiered by the Kronos Quartet), and Mekong:Soul (co-composed with Van Anh Vo) which was performed at the Kennedy Center and in Houston.
Thrice commissioned by The National Endowment for the Arts, Berger’a recent commissions include The Mellon and Rockefeller Foundations, Chamber Music Society, Lincoln Center, and Chamber Music America.
In addition to composition, Berger is an active researcher with over 80 publications in a wide range of fields relating to music, science and technology and has held research grants from DARPA, the Wallenberg Foundation, The National Academy of Sciences, the Keck Foundation, and others.
Berger is the PI of a major grant from the Templeton Religion Trust to study how music and architecture interact to create a sense of awe. -
Michael Bernstein
Professor of Computer Science and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI
On Partial Leave from 10/01/2025 To 06/30/2026BioMichael Bernstein is a Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, where he is a Bass University Fellow and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. A nationally bestselling author, Michael focuses on designing social, societal, and interactive technologies. This research has been reported in venues such as The New York Times, TED AI, and MIT Technology Review, and Michael himself has been recognized with an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and the Computer History Museum's Tech for Humanity Prize. Michael holds a bachelor's degree in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University, as well as a master's degree and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from MIT.
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Keith Bowen
Director, Learning Design Challenge, SAL Digital Learning
BioFor 20+ years, I have worked in the fields of international relief, development, and conflict resolution, building capacity in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, South Africa, Rwanda, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, as well as educating students in the U.S., Europe, and other countries who aspire to work in these fields.
Academics & Film
I've worked as an academic and filmmaker, creating educational documentaries on liberation movements around the world, which I've then used with university students in my classrooms. I've had several programs distributed by the Discovery Channel, which has been rewarding, but what has been especially remarkable to me is the response of my students. I've come to appreciate the power of narrative and immediacy of film to transform students' perceptions of the world and their place in it.
Learning Design
Along with an emphasis on narrative and immediacy, I've designed interactive programs that draw students into learning through exploration and discovery - with a dynamically shifting experience based on student choice and response. I've also designed learning programs featuring advanced multiplayer simulations with both live and online interaction.
Scale
I've taken this work to scale. In my work for the U.S. Government and international humanitarian organizations, I've designed courses that have been completed by tens of thousands of students and practitioners, not only at the State Department, USAID, relief agencies, and universities in the U.S., but also at comparable institutions in other countries, and even in internet cafes and refugee camps around the world. I've earned about a dozen awards for these efforts and have delivered presentations on them for the Under Secretary of State, the Senate Appropriations Committee, representatives of the the 57 countries of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the 35 countries of the Organization for American States, and others.
Virtual Exchange & "Wicked" Global Problems
I am continuing this work at Stanford. My focus now is designing media and technology programs to bring university students in the U.S. and other high-income countries into extended contact with counterpart students in fragile states and zones of conflict to address complex problems that no single country can solve on its own. As students work collaboratively to address these "wicked" problems, we measure advances in learning and shifts in attitude through qualitative and quantitative methods.
I have also launched and serve as Director for the Stanford Learning Design Challenge, which supports students across campus who seek to leverage research in the learning sciences, methodologies in human-centered design, and breakthroughs in emerging technology to change what’s possible in teaching and learning. https://edtech.stanford.edu/
This is an extraordinary time for those who design media and technology solutions for teaching and learning. Blended in smart combinations, especially with traditional in-person learning, the new tools we have are powerful:
- Visual narrative, through its expression in digital cinema
- Expanding and interconnecting networks of lifelong learners
- Complex human interaction, including multiplayer games and simulations
- Complex machine interaction, including generative AI, dynamically responsive to user needs
- Statistical data analysis, upon which to base informed, iterative human-centered design
- Worldwide electronic distribution, especially to inexpensive mobile devices
If we do this right, the world will be much better for it. -
Michael Bratman
U. G. and Abbie Birch Durfee Professor
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsPhilosophy of action, where this includes issues about individual agency over time, social and institutional organization and agency, and practical rationality.
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Joan Bresnan
Sadie Dernham Patek Professor in Humanities, Emerita
BioAvailable at https://web.stanford.edu/~bresnan/
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Chris Chafe
Duca Family Professor
BioChris Chafe is a composer, improvisor, and cellist, developing much of his music alongside computer-based research. He is Director of Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). In 2019, he was International Visiting Research Scholar at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies The University of British Columbia, Visiting Professor at the Politecnico di Torino, and Edgard-Varèse Guest Professor at the Technical University of Berlin. At IRCAM (Paris) and The Banff Centre (Alberta), he has pursued methods for digital synthesis, music performance and real-time internet collaboration. CCRMA's jacktrip project involves live concertizing with musicians the world over. Online collaboration software and research into latency factors continue to evolve. An active performer either on the net or physically present, his music reaches audiences in sometimes novel venues. An early network project was a simultaneous five-country concert was hosted at the United Nations in 2009. Chafe’s works include gallery and museum music installations which are now into their second decade with “musifications” resulting from collaborations with artists, scientists and MD’s. Recent work includes the Earth Symphony, the Brain Stethoscope project (Gnosisong), PolarTide for the 2013 Venice Biennale, Tomato Quintet for the transLife:media Festival at the National Art Museum of China and Sun Shot played by the horns of large ships in the port of St. Johns, Newfoundland.
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Eve Clark
Richard Lyman Professor in the Humanities, Emerita
BioI am interested in first language acquisition, the acquisition of meaning, acquisitional principles in word-formation compared across children and languages, and general semantic and pragmatic issues in the lexicon and in language use. I am currently working on the kinds of pragmatic information adults offer small children as they talk to them, and on children's ability to make use of this information as they make inferences about unfamiliar meanings and about the relations between familiar and unfamiliar words. I am interested in the inferences children make about where to 'place' unfamiliar words, how they identify the relevant semantic domains, and what they can learn about conventional ways to say things based on adult responses to child errors during acquisition. All of these 'activities' involve children and adults placing information in common ground as they interact. Another current interest of mine is the construction of verb paradigms: how do children go from using a single verb form to using forms that contrast in meaning -- on such dimensions as person, number, and tense? How do they learn to distinguish the meanings of homophones? To what extent do they make use of adult input to discern the underlying structure of the system? And how does conversation with more expert speakers (usually adults) foster the acquisition of a first language? I am particularly interested in the general role of practice along with feedback here.
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Herbert Clark
Albert Ray Lang Professor of Psychology, Emeritus
BioFrom Wikipedia:
"Herbert H. Clark (Herb Clark) is a psycholinguist currently serving as Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. His focuses include cognitive and social processes in language use; interactive processes in conversation, from low-level disfluencies through acts of speaking and understanding to the emergence of discourse; and word meaning and word use. Clark is known for his theory of "common ground": individuals engaged in conversation must share knowledge in order to be understood and have a meaningful conversation (Clark, 1985). Together with Deanna Wilkes-Gibbs (1986), he also developed the collaborative model, a theory for explaining how people in conversation coordinate with one another to determine definite references. Clark's books include Semantics and Comprehension, Psychology and Language: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics, Arenas of Language Use and Using Language." -
Alia Crum
Associate Professor of Psychology and, by courtesy, of Medicine (Primary Care & Population Health)
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsOur lab focuses on how subjective mindsets (e.g., thoughts, beliefs and expectations) can alter objective reality through behavioral, psychological, and physiological mechanisms. We are interested in understanding how mindsets affect important outcomes both within and beyond the realm of medicine, in the domains such as exercise, diet and stress. https://mbl.stanford.edu/
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Meg Cychosz
Assistant Professor of Linguistics
BioDr. Cychosz investigates how infants and children develop speech and language, including children who are d/Deaf or hard-of-hearing and multilingual learners. Her research bridges linguistics, cognitive science, developmental psychology, and electrical engineering to understand fundamental questions about language acquisition. Her interdisciplinary approach combines fieldwork with computational methods, using deep learning and automatic speech recognition tools to analyze naturalistic speech recordings from children's daily lives. She is particularly interested in how children's processing limitations might influence the structure of the world's languages, how sensory experiences like hearing loss affect language processing in early childhood, and how technological innovations can make language research more accessible and representative. Dr. Cychosz directs the Speech and Cognitive Development Lab and collaborates with clinical partners in audiology and speech-language pathology to ensure her research has translational impact to support children's language development.
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Todd Davies
Acad Research & Pgrm Officer, and Lecturer, Symbolic Systems Program
Current Role at StanfordAssociate Director, Symbolic Systems Program
Lecturer, Symbolic Systems Program
Faculty Affiliate, Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute -
Persi Diaconis
Mary V. Sunseri Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and Professor of Mathematics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsResearch Interests:
PROBABILITY THEORY
BAYESIAN STATISTICS
STATISTICAL COMPUTING
COMBINATORICS -
David Dill
Donald E. Knuth Professor in the School of Engineering, Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsSecure and reliable blockchain technology at Facebook.
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Hayley H Dunn
Undergraduate, Symbolic Systems
BioCurrently studying Computer Science and Economics
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Jean-Pierre Dupuy
Professor of French and Italian and, by courtesy, of Political Science
BioProfessor Jean-Pierre Dupuy is a Professor of Social and Political Philosophy at the École Polytechnique, Paris. He is the Director of research at the C.N.R.S. (Philosophy) and the Director of C.R.E.A. (Centre de Recherche en Épistémologie Appliquée), the philosophical research group of the École Polytechnique, which he founded in 1982. At Stanford University, he is a researcher at the Study of Language and Information (C.S.L.I.) Professor Dupuy is by courtesy a Professor of Political Science.
In his book The Mechanization of the Mind, Jean-Pierre Dupuy explains how the founders of cybernetics laid the foundations not only for cognitive science, but also artificial intelligence, and foreshadowed the development of chaos theory, complexity theory, and other scientific and philosophical breakthroughs. -
David Eagleman
Adjunct Professor, Psych/Public Mental Health & Population Sciences
BioDavid Eagleman is a neuroscientist, bestselling author, and Guggenheim Fellow. Dr. Eagleman’s areas of research include sensory substitution, time perception, vision, and synesthesia. He also studies the intersection of neuroscience with the legal system, and in that capacity he directs the non-profit Center for Science and Law. Eagleman is the writer and presenter of The Brain, an Emmy-nominated television series on PBS and BBC. He is the author of 8 books, including Livewired, The Runaway Species, The Brain, Incognito, and Wednesday is Indigo Blue. He is also the author of a widely adopted textbook on cognitive neuroscience, Brain and Behavior. His internationally bestselling book of literary fiction, SUM, has been translated into 32 languages, turned into two operas, and named a Best Book of the Year by Barnes and Noble. Dr. Eagleman has been a TED speaker, a guest on the Colbert Report, and profiled in the New Yorker magazine. He has launched several neuroscience companies from his research, including Neosensory and BrainCheck.
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Penelope Eckert
Albert Ray Lang Professor, Emerita
BioThe goal of my research is to understand the social meaning of linguistic variation. In order to do this, I pursue my sociolinguistic work in the context of in-depth ethnographic fieldwork, focusing on the relation between variation, linguistic style, social identity and social practice.
Gender has been the big misunderstood in studies of sociolinguistic variation - in spite of the fact that some of the most exciting intellectual developments over the past decades have been in theories of gender and sexuality ... so I have been spending a good deal of time working on language and gender as well.
Since adolescents and preadolescents are the movers and shakers in linguistic change, I concentrate on this age group, and much of my research takes place in schools. The institutional research site has made me think a good deal about learning and education, but particularly about the construction of adolescence in American society. -
Johannes C. Eichstaedt
Assistant Professor (Research) of Psychology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsLarge Language Models and AI: use of LLMs for mental healthcare delivery and well-being, safety and bias evaluation; anticipating impacts of AI on society
Methods: Natural Language Processing & LLMs; data science; longitudinal methods, machine learning, and psychological assessment through AI
Mental and physical health: depression and anxiety; health psychology: heart disease and opioid addiction
Well-being: emotion, life satisfaction, and purpose, and their individual and societal causes -
Cameron Ellis
Assistant Professor of Psychology
BioDr. Cameron Ellis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology. He leads the Scaffolding of Cognition Team, which focuses on the question: What is it like to be an infant? His team uses methods from neuroscience and cognitive science to assess the basic building blocks of the developing mind and answer this question. They are particularly interested in questions about how infants perceive, attend, learn, and remember. One prominent approach they use is fMRI with awake behaving infants. This provides unprecedented ways to access the cognitive mechanisms underlying the infant mind.
Dr. Ellis received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 2021. Before that, he received a Masters from Princeton University (2017) and a Bachelor of Science from Auckland University, New Zealand (2013). He was awarded the FLUX Dissertation Prize (2021) and the James Grossman Dissertation Prize (2021), as well as the William Kessen Teaching Award (2019). -
Judith Ellen Fan
Assistant Professor of Psychology, by courtesy, of Education and of Computer Science
BioI direct the Cognitive Tools Lab (https://cogtoolslab.github.io/) at Stanford University. Our lab aims to reverse engineer the human cognitive toolkit—in particular, how people use physical representations of thought to learn, communicate, and solve problems. Toward this end, we use a combination of approaches from cognitive science, computational neuroscience, and artificial intelligence to achieve deeper understanding of quintessentially human ways of thinking and imagining. Our broader goal is to leverage such scientific understanding of human cognition to guide the development of technologies that augment human agency and creativity.
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Anne Fernald
Josephine Knotts Knowles Professor of Human Biology, Emerita
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsWorking with English- and Spanish-learning children from diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, our research examines the importance of early language experience in supporting language development. We are deeply involved in community-based research in San Jose, designing an innovative parent-engagement program for low-resource Latino families with young children. We are also conducting field studies of beliefs about child development and caregiver-child interaction in rural villages in Senegal. A central goal of this translational research is to help parents understand their vital role in facilitating children’s language and cognitive growth.
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Chelsea Finn
Assistant Professor of Computer Science and of Electrical Engineering
BioChelsea Finn is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, and the William George and Ida Mary Hoover Faculty Fellow. Professor Finn's research interests lie in the ability to enable robots and other agents to develop broadly intelligent behavior through learning and interaction. Her work lies at the intersection of machine learning and robotic control, including topics such as end-to-end learning of visual perception and robotic manipulation skills, deep reinforcement learning of general skills from autonomously collected data, and meta-learning algorithms that can enable fast learning of new concepts and behaviors. Professor Finn received her Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and her PhD in Computer Science at UC Berkeley. Her research has been recognized through the ACM doctoral dissertation award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and the MIT Technology Review 35 under 35 list, and her work has been covered by various media outlets, including the New York Times, Wired, and Bloomberg. Throughout her career, she has sought to increase the representation of underrepresented minorities within CS and AI by developing an AI outreach camp at Berkeley for underprivileged high school students, a mentoring program for underrepresented undergraduates across three universities, and leading efforts within the WiML and Berkeley WiCSE communities of women researchers.
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Sean Follmer
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and, by courtesy, of Computer Science
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsHuman Computer Interaction, Haptics, Robotics, Human Centered Design
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Vivienne Fong
Director of Programs and Faculty Affairs, SIEPR Operations
Current Role at StanfordDirector of Programs and Faculty Affairs
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Michael Frank
Benjamin Scott Crocker Professor of Human Biology and Professor, by courtesy, of Linguistics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsHow do we learn to communicate using language? I study children's language learning and how it interacts with their developing understanding of the social world. I use behavioral experiments, computational tools, and novel measurement methods like large-scale web-based studies, eye-tracking, and head-mounted cameras.
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Justin Gardner
Associate Professor of Psychology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsHow does neural activity in the human cortex create our sense of visual perception? We use a combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging, computational modeling and analysis, and psychophysical measurements to link human perception to cortical brain activity.
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Michael Genesereth
Associate Professor of Computer Science
BioGenesereth is most known for his work on Computational Logic and applications of that work in Enterprise Management, Computational Law, and General Game Playing. He is one of the founders of Teknowledge, CommerceNet, Mergent Systems, and Symbium. Genesereth is the director of the Logic Group at Stanford and the founder and research director of CodeX - the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics.
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William Gilly
Professor of Oceans
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy work has contributed to understanding electrical excitability in nerve & muscle in organisms ranging from brittle-stars to mammals. Current research addresses behavior, physiology and ecology of squid through field and lab approaches. Electronic tagging plus in situ video, acoustic and oceanographic methods are used to study behaviors and life history in the field. Lab work focuses on control of chromogenic behavior by the chromatophore network and of locomotion by the giant axon system.
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Deborah M Gordon
Paul S. and Billie Achilles Professor of Environmental Biology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsProfessor Deborah M Gordon studies the evolutionary ecology of collective behavior. Ant colonies operate without central control, using local interactions to regulate colony behavior.
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Kalanit Grill-Spector
Susan S. and William H. Hindle Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsFor humans, recognition is a natural, effortless skill that occurs within a few hundreds of milliseconds, yet it is one of the least understood aspects of visual perception. Our research utilizes functional imaging (fMRI),diffusion weighted imaging (DWI), computational techniques, and behavioral methods to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying visual recognition in humans. We also examine the development of these mechanisms from childhood to adulthood as well as between populations.
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James Gross
Ernest R. Hilgard Professor, Professor of Psychology and, by courtesy, of Philosophy
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI am interested in emotion and emotion regulation. My research employs behavioral, physiological, and brain measures to examine emotion-related personality processes and individual differences. My current interests include emotion coherence, specific emotion regulation strategies (reappraisal, suppression), automatic emotion regulation, and social anxiety.
