I am a social- and cognitive neuroscientist from Germany but spent most of my scientific career in Belgium. I am Einstein Professor for ‘Social Intelligence’ at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and the Department of Psychology at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Furthermore, I am PI in the excellence cluster ‘Science of Intelligence’. After my PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research in Munich, I worked six years at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig where I was also awarded a Heisenberg fellowship from the German Research Foundation (DFG). In 2006, I received a research professorship at Ghent University where I worked until I was awarded an Einstein Strategic Professorship in 2020. I am interested in the neuro-cognitive mechanisms underlying our social behaviour and group influence. Furthermore, I want to understand how people intentionally control their thoughts and actions. Finally, I am investigating the influence of high-level beliefs on basic cognitive processes.

My name is Sandi which is a short form of Alexandra. I support Marcel Brass and the whole team in all organisational and administrative areas and take care of the smooth running of the daily business and general administration tasks.

I am a cognitive neuroscientist at Ghent University, currently working as a guest researcher at the Social Intelligence Lab. I did my PhD at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, and then did a postdoc at the Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University.

My research focuses on the neural basis of cognitive control and intentional action, how task-relevant information is represented in the brain, and how such representations change under varying demands. To investigate these issues, I combine functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), machine learning tools such as multivariate decoding and representational similarity analysis, and computational modelling techniques.

I also have a keen interest in laypeople’s views on free will (“Do you think free will exists?”), whether (dis)believing in free will affects our behavior, and how beliefs and attitudes towards free will are related.

My name is Silvia Formica and I come from Italy. I am currently a Post-Doc in the lab.
Before moving to Berlin, I studied Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology in Milano and Padova (Italy) and I did my PhD at Gent University (Belgium) under the supervision of Prof. Marcel Brass. My thesis concerned instructions following and I investigated this process using behavioral and electrophysiological measures.
I am interested in the neuro-cognitive mechanisms involved in adapting to novel and challenging situations, and I am curious about how such mechanisms are used in social contexts.

I am Carl Michael Galang (just call me Mike!) from Toronto, Canada. I am currently a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Humboldt University of Berlin under the supervision of Prof. Marcel Brass. I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto with a double major in Cognitive Science and Philosophy. My PhD training is in the emerging field of Social Cognitive Neuroscience and was completed at McMaster University under the supervision of Prof. Sukhvinder Obhi. My Post-Doctoral research focuses on the Sense of Agency; although my research interests span a number of topics including: empathy, social power, and various human mirror neuron system indices (e.g., automatic imitation, motor resonance).

My name is Matilde Rocca, and I am a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Social Intelligence Lab. I did my PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Turin, within the Cognition, Motion and Neuroscience Lab led by Prof. Cristina Becchio, under the supervision of Prof. Andrea Cavallo. I performed all my research activity at the Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, based in Genoa, Italy. My PhD project focused on studying how we represent other people's actions when we actively engage in a social interaction with them. To do this, I studied detailed aspects of upper-limb movement kinematics during real-time dyadic joint actions. Within the Social Intelligence Lab, I aim to investigate how we represent the actions performed by multiple agents simultaneously, and how these representations affect our own motor behaviour, in order to address issues related to social group conformity from a motor perspective.

I am a developmental cognitive neuroscientist at the Freie Universität Berlin working as a guest researcher at the Social Intelligence Lab. I did my PhD at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, and then worked as a DAAD scholar at the Brain and Development Lab at the Leiden University before I started my postdoc at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin. I am interested in social learning and decision making from a developmental cognitive neuroscience perspective using EEG, fMRI and computational modeling.

I am Nel Tavernier from Belgium. I am currently a Ph.D student at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Marcel Brass and Prof. Dr. Michael Pauen. My research topic is about manipulating laypeople’s subjective belief in free will through immersive Virtual Reality experiences. I investigate whether adding an experience to the method of manipulation could have an impact on down-stream processes (e.g. behavior, cognitive process), which was not the case for previous methods in literature. Further, my research interests include various topics such as: social facilitation, Theory of Mind, and cultural differences in beliefs.

My name is Manisha, I work on a DAAD-funded doctoral project at the Social Intelligence lab. My project examines how social influence operates in the context of ritualistic behaviour. I attempt to recreate aspects of the social world in VR environments as I am intrigued by the confluence between cognitive neuroscience and anthropology. I completed my postgraduate studies at the University of Oxford and previously received training in cognitive science from Indian Institute of Technology (IITGN) at the Control and Learning of Action Lab. I have a keen interest in embodied cognition, two-person neuroscience and group conformity.

I am Yu Hei SHUM from Hong Kong. I am currently a Ph.D student in the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin funded by DAAD. I am supervised by Prof. Marcel Brass. My research is about the neural mechanism behind volition. I test the validity of different decision models that attempt to explain the generation of volition and voluntary behavior.

I am a master’s student at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain. I did my undergraduate in psychology with a minor in cognitive science at the American University of Beirut. I am currently working as a research assistant at the Social Intelligence Lab, investigating the contribution of auditory and visual cues to group contagion in a Virtual Reality environment. Previously, I have investigated the tonotopy and periodotopy of the primary auditory cortex using fMRI. My research interests tend to center around social cognition and evolutionary psychology/neuroscience, with a special interest in group-related processes and the role of attention and memory in social cognition.

My name is Valerii, and I am a research assistant at the lab. I studied Clinical Psychology in Moscow as my first degree, and currently I am pursuing my master’s degree in Cognitive Neuroscience at HU Berlin. For my thesis in Moscow, I applied natural language processing and data analysis in the field of psychotherapy research. At the same time, I worked as a research assistant to Tommaso Fedele in the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. We analyzed MEG recordings of epileptic patients using machine learning algorithms to reveal seizure initialization and propagation. In Berlin, I decided to switch my research to social and cognitive psychology. Since April 2020, I have been working in the Social Intelligence group at HU Berlin, where I have been developing behavioral experiments online and in virtual reality.

My name is Ayca Akan and I come from Turkey. I am a master's student at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, and a lab rotation student at Social Intelligence Lab. My main research interest are the neurocognitive mechanisms of attention and executive functions, theory (re)construction, and cognitive modeling. Currently, I am investigating how rule-breaking affects the sense of agency under the team of Prof.Brass. Furthermore, I am a passionate advocate for good scientific practices, and currently conducting a meta-research study on the Western Blot visualization practices of scientists, under Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, and writing a paper on replication crisis in neuroscience under Boğaziçi University, Turkey.