PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR [email] [cv] [scholar] [bluesky]

Marco is Associate Professor and MRC Career Development Fellow at UCL's Department of Experimental Psychology. His research focuses on the cognitive and neural mechanisms of adaptive human behavior, particularly in social interactions. After completing his undergraduate degree in Germany and a Wellcome Trust-funded MSc and DPhil at Oxford, Marco conducted his postdoctoral work at Oxford and UCL. He established his current group in 2024. He combines computational modelling, neuroimaging, and brain stimulation in his research. His goal is to characterise and causally understand the latent mechanisms and brain processes that enable navigation of complex social environments.

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATE

Yongling completed her Ph.D. at Beijing Normal University in 2024, under the joint supervision of Marco at UCL. Yongling continues her collaboration with Marco as a postdoctoral researcher now. She is interested in understanding how people integrate information during social group decisions and the neural mechanisms underlying these processes. Her current work specifically explores how individuals perceive the sense of self and group dynamics within complex social contexts, and how these processes are affected by mental health. She uses computational models of behavior, M/EEG, fMRI, and brain stimulation techniques to study this.

RESEARCH ASSISTANT

Shujun completed her Research Master's in Psychology at the University of Amsterdam in 2024, where she studied the impact of feedback timing on social reinforcement learning. She seeks to understand the behavioral, computational, and neural mechanisms underlying social navigation. She employs a diverse set of methodologies, including behavioral experiments, computational modeling, M/EEG, fMRI, and artificial intelligence. As a research assistant, Shujun aims to further develop her skills by gaining hands-on experience with brain stimulation techniques to study both social and non-social aspects of human cognitive functioning.