Alumni

Josh Abbott was a postdoc at ARC from 2017-2018 working with Tim Pleskac. He is now a Machine Learning Engineer at Adobe.

Jinan Allan was a postdoc at ARC and with the Science of Intelligence Cluster of Excellence (2021-2023). She is now an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Clemson University in South Carolina.

Stefan Appelhoff joined ARC in 2018 to work on his dissertation on Neural Correlates of Human Decisions from Experience. He became a steering group member of the MNE-Python analysis software and lead maintainer of the Brain Imaging Data Structure (BIDS). In 2022, he successfully completed his PhD work and joined the Adaptive Memory and Decision Making lab as a postdoctoral researcher.

Florian Artinger was a research scientist at ARC from 2017 to 2019. He is now an executive partner heading the Max Planck spin-off Simply Rational, a consultancy combining behavioral science and data science to empower people to make better decisions. He is also a professor of Business Administration at Berlin International University of Applied Sciences.

Ruben C. Arslan was a Research Scientist at ARC from 2017 to 2021 studying how people know their risk preferences with Ralph Hertwig and Gert G. Wagner. He is now a postdoctoral researcher in the personality department at the University of Leipzig.

Larissa Conradt was a Research Scientist during the first two years of ARC (2012-2014). Her research focused on swarm intelligence and collective decision making in animals. She is now a Senior Data Scientist in the British National Health Service.

Junyi Dai was a Postdoc in the cognitive modeling project between 2014 and 2017. He then returned to China as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences in Zhejiang University.

Luka Johanna Debbeler was a research scientist at ARC from 2020 to 2021. She is now a postdoctoral researcher at University of Münster, studying evidence-based psychotherapy and diagnostics for children and adolescents.

Dominik Deffner was a postdoc at ARC and with the Science of Intelligence Excellence Cluster (2021-2024). He is now an Assistant Professor for Computational Modelling of Behaviour at Philipps-University Marburg where he studies how culture and other collective dynamics emerge from individual decisions, facilitating the unique adaptability of our species.

Marwa El Zein initiated her scientific collaboration with ARC in 2017 and following that started a research scientist position at ARC from 2021 to 2023 working on collective decision-making under a European research fellowship (Marie Curie Fellowship). She is now a senior research consultant in cognitive and behavioral sciences at the company Humans Matter in Paris.

Renato Frey was a postdoctoral researcher during the first two years of ARC (2012-2014). He is now an SNSF Eccellenza professor and head of Cognitive and Behavioral Decision Research at the Department of Psychology, University of Zurich.

Michael Geers worked as an intern (2019), as a PhD student (2020-2024), and as a postdoc (2024) at ARC. He is now a tenure-track assistant professor of Marketing at the Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, University College Dublin (UCD).

Philipp Gerlach joined ARC in 2013 as a doctoral student. After completing his dissertation he stayed as a postdoc until 2017. Philipp then became a Full Professor for Experimental and Social Psychology at Fresenius University, Hamburg, Germany.

Anton Gollwitzer was a Postdoc at ARC between 2021 and 2022. He now serves as an Assistant Professor at BI Norwegian Business School and as an Associate Research Scientist at the MPIB. He earned his PhD at Yale University, following degrees in Computer Science and Psychology at New York University. His research spans across psychology, decision making, motivation, and human behavior.

Sebastian Grüneisen joined ARC as a Marie Curie fellow (2020-2021). His work focuses on the development of social cognition and cooperative decision-making. He is now an Assistant Professor at Leipzig University.

Sebastian Horn was a Postdoc/Researcher Scientist at ARC from 2012 to 2017. He investigated motivated cognition across the lifespan (with a focus on developmental differences in decision and memory processes) using cognitive modeling tools. He is now a Senior Researcher (independent Research Group Leader) at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

Bertrand Jayles was a Postdoc at ARC ( 2018-2020) where he studied collective decision-making in human groups with Dr. Ralf Kurvers. He then moved on to study social resilience as a Research Fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and now joined the EDHEC Infrastructure Institute as a Senior Sustainability Data Scientist.

Mirjam Jenny was a postdoc at ARC from 2013 to 2015. She is now Scientific Director of the Institute for Planetary Health Behavior at the University of Erfurt. Prior to that, she founded and led the Science Communication Project Group at the Robert Koch Institute and supported the communication of the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence in Berlin.

Anika K. Josef was a doctoral student at ARC and an IMPRS LIFE fellow from 2013 to 2016. From 2016 to 2018 she worked as a consultant for the German Ministery for Education and Sciences at VDI/VDE-IT GmbH. In 2018, she joined the Clinical Trials Unit at the Medical Clinic - University of Freiburg where she is now co-heading the department project management for clinical trials.

Juliane Kämmer was a postdoc (2014-2016) and research scientist (2017-2020) at ARC. In 2020, she joined the University of Bern, first as a Marie-Curie fellow and now working as a Senior Researcher to study (and help improve) diagnostic decision making of medical teams.

Liza Konovalova was a Postdoc until August 2020 working with Thorsten Pachur. She is now an Associated Professor of Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School at the University of Warwick. 

Tomás Lejarraga was a research scientist at the Center for Adaptive Rationality from 2013 to 2016. He studied on human risk taking and rationality. He continues to be an Associate Scientist and to visit the institute regularly. He is now an Associate Professor at the Universitat de les Illes Balears.

Christina Leuker worked as a student research assistant (2012-2014), as a PhD student (2015-2018) and as a postdoc (2018-2020) at ARC. She then joined the Robert Koch-Institute as a behavioral scientist (2020-2021) and became a research group leader (2022-2023). She is now a senior consultant at PD – Berater der öffentlichen Hand.

Ying Li was a postdoc at ARC from 2019 to 2022. He is now an associate professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing.

Jutta Mata was a Research Scientist at ARC from 2012-2014. Her research focuses on individual, social, and other environmental influences on health behaviors, particularly related to eating, physical activity, and obesity. She is now a Full Professor of Health Psychology at the University of Mannheim, Germany and also an Associate Scientist at ARC.

Rui Mata was a Senior Research Scientist at ARC from 2012 to 2014 and worked on understanding the development of economic preferences across the life span. He is now an Associate Professor at the University of Basel, Switzerland.

Lucas Molleman came to ARC as a postdoc in 2016. In 2018, he moved on to another postdoc at the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands, where he is now an Assistant Professor.

Dirk Ostwald was a postdoctoral researcher at ARC from 2012 to 2014. He is now professor at Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg.

Arthur Paul Pedersen was a postdoc at ARC from 2013 to 2015. He is now professor of computer science at the City University of New York (cuny) and research scientist with the CUNY Remote Sensing Earth Systems Institute (the crest institute) at The City College of New York. Pedersen's primary areas of research span decision and game theory, artificial intelligence and cognitive science, probability and statistics, network science and social networks, and logic and computation.

David Pietraszewski was a postdoc and then research scientist at ARC from 2014 to 2023. He is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Santa Barbara, California in the department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. David studies social cognition and philosophy of mind from an evolutionary perspective.

Tim Pleskac was a Senior Research Scientist at ARC from 2014 to 2018. He became a professor at the University of Kansas in 2018 and was Department Chair from 2022 to 2023. In 2023, he moved to Indiana University Bloomington as a Professor. Tim studies how people make judgments and decisions, using computational modeling and methods from the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences.

Michael Schulte-Mecklenbeck was a postdoc during the first three years of ARC (2012-2015). He is now an Associate Professor at the University of Bern Business School, Switzerland and continues the collaboration with ARC as an Associate Scientist to this day.

Christin Schulze was a Senior Research Scientist and head of the research area Lifespan Development of Decision Making until 2023. She is now a Lecturer in Computational Cognitive Science at the University of New South Wales, Australia.

Bernhard Spitzer was a Research Scientist (2018-2019) and Senior Research Scientist (2020-2021) at ARC. He now leads the Research Group Adaptive Memory and Decision Making (AMD) at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development.

Kevin Tiede was a postdoc at ARC from 2021 to 2024. Kevin is now a postdoc at the Chair of Health Communication at the University of Erfurt.

Dries Trippas was a postdoc at ARC from 2014 – 2017, applying mathematical modeling techniques to better understand decision making under uncertainty.
He is now Data Science Manager at Red Bull HQ in Salzburg, Austria.

Jan K. Woike was a Research Scientist at the Center from 2012. In June 2020, he started as a Lecturer (assistant Professor) at the University of Plymouth.

Charley Wu completed his PhD and then became a Postdoc at ARC. He left in 2019 for a postdoc at Harvard University. Since 2020, he has been an Independent Group Leader at the University of Tübingen, where he runs the Human and Machine Cognition Lab, with support from the Machine Learning Excellence Cluster and the Tübingen AI center.

Kyanoush Yahosseini was a PhD at ARC from 2016 to 2019. He is now Head of the Unit for Research Data Management at the Robert Koch Institute, Berlin.

Shuli Yu was a postdoc at ARC from 2015-2017, investigating the time course of judgments and decisions. She then joined Judge.me, a tech startup, as a researcher, and now heads product at their main office in London, UK.

Veronika Zilker was a PhD student and postdoctoral researcher at ARC from 2016 to 2022. She left in 2022 for a postdoc at the Technical University of Munich. Since October 2023 she is an assistant professor at the University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt.