PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR [email] [cv] [scholar] [bluesky]

Marco is Associate Professor and MRC Career Development Fellow at UCL's Department of Experimental Psychology and PI at the Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry. His research focuses on the cognitive and neural mechanisms of adaptive human behavior, particularly in social interactions. After completing his undergraduate degree in Germany and a Wellcome Trust-funded MSc and DPhil at Oxford, Marco conducted his postdoctoral work at Oxford and UCL. He established his current group in 2024. He combines computational modelling, neuroimaging, and brain stimulation in his research. His goal is to characterise and causally understand the latent mechanisms and brain processes that enable navigation of complex social environments.

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATE

Yongling completed her Ph.D. at Beijing Normal University in 2024, under the joint supervision of Marco at UCL. Yongling continues her collaboration with Marco as a postdoctoral researcher now. She is interested in understanding how people integrate information during social group decisions and the neural mechanisms underlying these processes. Her current work specifically explores how individuals perceive the sense of self and group dynamics within complex social contexts, and how these processes are affected by mental health. She uses computational models of behavior, M/EEG, fMRI, and brain stimulation techniques to study this.

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATE

Vicky is interested in the application of statistical methods to understand brain function and complex behaviour. She completed her undergraduate training in Statistics at the University of Otago, New Zealand, before undertaking a PhD in the Epilepsy Neuroinformatics Group at the University of Melbourne, Australia. During her PhD, she used functional connectivity methods to study reading performance in patients with epilepsy. In March 2026, she joined the Social Computational Neuroscience Lab at UCL as a postdoctoral researcher. Vicky’s current work focuses on neuroimaging and computational modelling of decision-making and reasoning in the prefrontal cortex.

PHD STUDENT

Shujun completed her Research Master's in Psychology at the University of Amsterdam, where she studied the impact of feedback timing on social reinforcement learning. She then joined the Social Computational Neuroscience Lab as a research assistant to causally study social basis function with transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS). As a PhD student starting in 2025, she has continued her interests in exploring how people form latent representations to optimize social interactions. She employs a diverse set of methodologies, including behavioural experiments, computational modelling, M/EEG, fMRI, TUS and artificial intelligence.

MRES STUDENT

Karen is an MRes Cognitive Neuroscience student in the Social Computational Neuroscience Lab. Her research investigates how transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS) modulates confidence judgments and social decision-making, combining brain stimulation, computational modelling, and behavioural experiments to explore the mechanisms underlying confidence and social behaviour.

MSC STUDENT

Yin is an MSc Cognitive and Decision Sciences student in the Social Computational Neuroscience Lab. Her research examines how individuals learn about their position within social hierarchies through experiences of winning and losing, and how such learning generalises to broader social contexts and future decision-making. She combines behavioural tasks with computational modelling to explore the cognitive processes that underlie social learning and adaptation.