Alexander Lab @ FAU

Prof. Alexander received his Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Science at Indiana University, Bloomington in 2006. As an FWO Odysseus Laureate recipient, he established the the Models of Cognitive Control laboratory at Ghent University in 2013, and moved the lab to the Center for Complex Systems & Brain Sciences at Florida Atlantic University in January of 2018. Prof. Alexander's CV can be found here.

Basak got her master’s degree at METU (Informatics Institute and Department of Philosophy) where she worked on the intersection of mathematical logic and cognitive algorithms. In her thesis, she questioned the trade-off between the model assumptions in causal models (how causality is represented and implemented in models) and the complexity of the phenomenon that is to be modeled. She is now working on computational models of brain function with a focus on causality under the supervision of Dr. Alexander at the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences. Her main research question is how to formulate causal relationships in nonlinearly interacting complex phenomena in neural systems.

Ryan completed his undergraduate at Florida Atlantic University where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience and Behavior and a second Bachelor of Science in Biology. He's interested in value based decision making and dopamine reinforcement learning. Currently, he is working with Dr. Alexander where they are investigating the temporal dynamics of information integration and influence of presentation order on learning task structure.

I'm interested in the feedback between perception and behavior. Seems like perception can hold many intricate associations which influence our behavior- and in turn influence behavior of the environment. Understanding and computing this process to a more accurate representation, I believe, can greatly benefit a holistic social system design.

Dr.Vassena received her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology at Ghent University in 2006. In 2016 she was awarded a Marie Curie Felloship to investigate interactions of prefrontal cortex in error processing using combined EEG and fMRI analyses.

Mr. Deraeve is a graduate student in Experimental Psychology at Ghent University. Before joining the lab, he earned a Masters Degree in Data Analysis. His research applies multi-voxel pattern analysis to investigate the neural representations of rules and task sets.