People

In the story of the stone soup, a soldier convinces a village to come together and make soup out of ingredients that they were all individually hoarding in their houses, while going hungry, by the expedient of placing an allegedly magical stone in a pot of water. I think of my role in a similar light; I serve as an excuse for young people to ask interesting questions and learn about the nature of behavior.

I work on developing Cognitive game playing agents with Human Priors. The idea is to make game playing more like human playing which, in recent times, has systematically and significantly shifted to large scale pattern matching. Such agents would benefit from the same level of generalization that humans show and advance the goals of Aritifical General Intelligence.

I was interested in figuring out the mysteries of our galaxy when I was young and took up Physics as my undergraduate degree. It turns out human beings are much more mysterious. Serendipitously, I am here studying human behavior. My thesis lies in the confluence of psychology and economics, where I study the structural and psychological factors influencing people's inclination to forego later rewards and choose 'now' using innovative gaming experimental paradigms and computational models.

Hi, Hari here ('naam toh nahi suna hoga'). I think about quitting. My work focuses on defining the principles behind when people decide to quit an activity. The modalities that I use include behavioral experiments and large-scale datasets. Besides my academic shenanigans, I also learn classical music and play video games. I also like running. Lastly, this bio does not encompass my current lived experiences as a PhD student, which briefly can be described as transient and ever-growing.

For my Ph.D., I am working on human decision-making, particularly formation, mental representation, reversals of preferences, and the role of attention in the phenomena in domains including and beyond consumer choice. I use behavioural experiments and Bayesian modelling approaches to decipher the cognitive mechanisms involved in decision-making. I spend my leisure time reading Indian philosophies.

Interested in social cognition.

I am interested in studying anxiety and decision-making, particularly how the stochastic nature of self-identification impacts an individual's anxiety levels in various environmental stimuli.
When I'm not in the lab, you can find me around the campus hunting flowers or stalking cats. And even though I have lots of hobbies, I usually end up enjoying a good nap or naming my plushies—because, let's be real, I'm literally just a girl.

Working on Automated Question Generation within the lab. Personal interest in exploring interactive technology for music production and sports analytics.

Kilo volts and amperes, is where my journey did start,
Now in cognitive systems, I play my part.
In machine learning's depths, I explore with all my heart,
Navigating human-computer realms,I am crafting my art.

I am Vikram Kumar, an MTech student passionate about Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and their implications in cognitive science. Under the mentorship of Prof. Dr. Nisheeth Srivastava.I'm currently delving into Item Response Theory, aiming to develop novel methodologies to enhance its application and address associated complexities.