SNaG lab members

McKell Carter is the director of the Social Neuroscience and Games lab and Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neurosicence at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His research focuses on characterizing social effects on decision making, by applying machine learning techniques to the analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging data acquired from individuals playing a game with a social component. Dr Carter's work focuses not only on those social processes of...

Heejung is the first graduate student to join the SNaG Lab, starting August 2014. She received her M.S. in Cognitive Psychology at Korea University in 2014, where she investigated the neural correlates of social conformity. Heejung is interested in the impact of social influence on human decision making, more specifically, the cognitive/affective biases that arise from such influences.

Giuseppe Bonanno is an undergraduate research assistant in the Social Neuroscience and Games lab. He is working with machine learning software to identify and monitor areas of the brain which are particularly active for risk and reward. His interests are diverse, with those in psychology including issues in learning, education, motivation, and risk as they relate to self-worth and success in various forms. Giuseppe is an undergraduate currently studying philosophy...

Shabnam is a postdoctoral researcher using computational neuroimaging methods to study social cognition in learning and decision making—especially risky choice—in both healthy and clinical populations. She is particularly interested in identifying novel, neurally-informed targets for behavior change intervention, examining interactions between perception and motivation and their effect on desired behavior. In 2014, Shabnam earned her Ph.D. from Caltech, where she investigated the neural mechanisms supporting cognitive control, focusing on prefrontocortical...

Jacob Parelman is a Research Assistant in the Social Neuroscience and Games lab and also acts as Lab Manager. Jacob recieved his B.A. in Psychology with Latin Honors from the Unversity of Colorado Boulder in May, 2014. Jacob's research interests focus on how individuals synthesize information from their past experiences and their current social environment to give rise to rational (or irrational) decisions. Jacob is currently investigating the underlying mechansims...

Kim Fairley will start as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the SNaG Lab this coming September. Currently she is finishing her PhD in Economics at the Radboud University Nijmegen in The Netherlands. During her PhD she intensively collaborates with the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior. Kim uses neuroimaging to better understand models of decision making under uncertainty. Thereby she focuses on how uncertainty, directly stemming from another human...

Danielle is entering her senior year at the University of Colorado and has been an Undergraduate Research Assistant in the Social Neuroscience and Games Lab since the Spring of 2016. She is pursuing a degree in Psychology with a certificate in Technology, Advertising and Media. Danielle’s current research examines the interactions of social context and individual levels of risk in decision making. Specifically, what situational changes are enough to alter...

Abhijit Suresh is a research assistant in the Social Neuroscience and Games lab. He is working on leveraging neuroimaging data with machine learning to identify voxels in the brain that are associated with specific actions/behaviors. Abhijit’s interests lie in interdisciplinary research between psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Abhijit is a graduate student in computer science (and the institute of Cognitive Science) at CU Boulder. In 2014 he received...

Emily has been an Undergraduate Research Assistant in the Social Neuroscience and Games lab since spring of 2015. She is currently a senior at the University of Colorado at Boulder, working on a degree in Psychology and Leadership Studies as well as a Pre-Medical track. Emily’s research interests are focused around decision-making in social environments particularly looking at social responsiveness in the autistic spectrum and circumscribed interests in motion.