DIRECTOR
Kevin Ochsner, Ph.D.
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Kevin received his bachelor's degree summa cum laude in psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his Masters and Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University. He has also received postdoctoral training in social psychology at Harvard (in lab of Daniel Gilbert) and functional neuroimaging at Stanford University (in lab of John Gabrieli, now at MIT).
He currently is Professor and Chair in the Department of Psychology at Columbia University. Kevin's research interests include the psychological and neural processes involved in emotion, self-control, and person perception. All of his work employs a social cognitive neuroscience approach that seeks to integrate the theories and methods of social psychology on the one hand, and cognitive neuroscience on the other.
Kevin is a recipient of the Young Investigator Award from The Cognitive Neuroscience Society, Columbia University’s Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award, and the APA Division 3 New Investigator Award. In 2010 Kevin was identified as 27th most cited Social Psychologist of all time, corrected for stage of career, in an article on citation impact by Nosek et al. published in PSPB. In 2008 Kevin was identified as the most cited Assistant Professor in Social Psychology in an article published in SPSP’s Diologue.
Along with Nim Tottenham, Kevin is Co-Director of the Psychology Undergraduate Honor’s Program. His teaching includes seminars on social cognitive neuroscience as well as a lecture course on experimental psychological methods for studying emotion and social cognition.
POST-DOCTORAL FELLOWS
GRADUATE STUDENTS
Ovidia Stanoi
Ovidia studies the perception and regulation of emotions in social settings. She received a B.A. in International Relations from Brown University and a M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Teachers College. Before joining the SCAN lab, she worked in the Loss, Trauma, and Emotion lab where she investigated the impact of scarcity on emotion regulation flexibility with George Bonanno.
Ben Silver
Ben is interested in how our motivations impact how we learn about other people, and how we build and update representations of other people in the brain. He received an ScB from Brown University, where he worked with Dima Amso in the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Lab. Before joining the SCAN lab, Ben worked as a Research Assistant with Rebecca Jones and Jonathan Power at Weill Cornell Medicine, studying social cognition in Autism.
Zhouzhou (Jo) He
Jo is interested in how our social relationships regulate our emotional experiences in both adaptive and maladaptive ways. She received a B.A. in Psychology with a Specialization in Computing from the University of California, Los Angeles. Before joining the SCAN Lab, she worked as an undergraduate research assistant at Dr. Naomi Eisenberger's Social and Affective Neuroscience Lab, Dr. Matthew Lieberman's Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab and Dr. Jennifer Silvers' Social Affective Neuroscience and Development Lab. Ultimately, she hopes her work can inform how we may leverage social relationships to improve well-being.
Eisha Haque
Eisha is interested in how social relationships shape emotional well-being. Specifically, she is interested in investigating how social support influences emotion regulation. She received a B.Sc. in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science from the University of Toronto. Before joining the SCAN Lab, Eisha worked as a lab manager at Dr. Maital Neta’s Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she investigated social networks and emotional bias.
RESEARCH STAFF
Alex Montenegro
Alex received her B.S in Psychology from Montana State University where she worked in a Sleep and Development Lab with Dr. Cara Palmer. At MSU, she spearheaded a project examining the relationship between altitude, daytime sleepiness, and mental health symptoms. She joined the SCAN lab as a Bridge-to-PhD scholar and will be examining systems involved with emotional reactivity, regulation, and memory in clinical populations. Alex is excited to learn more about emotion regulation and experiment with neuroimaging techniques.
RESEARCH ASSISTANTS
Misa Kinno Lucyshyn
Misa is a junior at the Columbia School of General Studies studying Psychology, and is a Peer Writing Fellow at the Writing Center. She is interested in emotion regulation, social networks, and affiliation, particularly among college students studying dance. Her research interests are informed by her professional experience as a dancer prior to entering Columbia.
Jessie Lin
Jessie is a sophomore in Columbia College studying Psychology and English. She is interested in internal representations of visual and verbal thought, especially in relation to both self-perception and the development of social networks.
Arielle Clarke
Arielle is a junior in Columbia College studying Neuroscience and African-American studies. She is interested in emotion regulation and group identity-motivated behavior, especially in relation to early-life adversarial experiences.
Halil Cenker Camci
Cenker is a sophomore in Columbia College studying Psychology and Econ-Math. He is interested in thinking and decision-making, with an emphasis on how social, emotional, and cultural interactions regulate and influence our decisions.
Maya Kalaora
Mayra Kalaora is a senior at Columbia College double majoring in Neuroscience and English. She is interested in emotion regulation and intolerance of uncertainty, both on the individual level and also within romantic couples.
COLLABORATORS
Lisa Feldmann-Barrett, Ph.D. website
Jennifer Bartz, Ph.D. website
Jennifer Beer, Ph.D. website
Peter Bearman, Ph.D. website
Niall Bolger, Ph.D. website
B.J. Casey, Ph.D. website
Joan Chiao, Ph.D. website
Geraldine Downey, Ph.D. website
Michael Green, Ph.D. website
John Gabrieli, Ph.D. website
James Gross, Ph.D. website
Hedy Kober, Ph.D. website
Harold Koenigsberg, M.D. website
John Mann, M.D. website
Jeff Miller, M.D. website
Jon Morgenstern, Ph.D. website
James Murrough, M.D., Ph.D. website
Nasir Naqvi, M.D., Ph.D. website
Barbara Stanley, Ph.D. website
Tor Wager, Ph.D. website