Robb rutledge
principal investigator

Robb is an assistant professor of psychology and psychiatry at Yale University. He is also a member of the Wu Tsai Institute at Yale. Robb completed a BSc in Biology at Caltech and a PhD in Neural Science at New York University supervised by Paul Glimcher. He was a postdoc at University College London at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging working with Ray Dolan and Peter Dayan. Prior to moving to Yale, Robb was a Group Leader at the Max Planck Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research at University College London. He has won early career awards including the MRC Career Development Award, the Society for Neuroeconomics Early Career Award, and the APS Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions. Robb is interested in subjective feelings like happiness and sadness, and how feelings relate to events in our lives and to the decisions we make.

scholar | twitter | Email: robb.rutledge (all email addresses have the domain yale.edu unless otherwise noted)

 
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chang-hao kao
PostDoctoral researcher

Chang-Hao is a postdoctoral associate at Yale in the Rutledge Lab. He did his PhD in Psychology at University of Pennsylvania supervised by Joe Kable. In his PhD research, he combined computational modeling and functional neuroimaging to understand human learning in dynamic environments. He is currently studying functional brain network and mood dynamics during learning in the general population and in mood disorders.

scholar | twitter | Email: chang-hao.kao

 
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AKSHAY nAIr
POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER

Akshay is a consultant neuropsychiatrist at Atkinson Morley Regional Neurosciences Centre at St George’s Hospital. He was a Leonard Wolfson Clinical Training Fellow for his PhD research at UCL supervised by Robb, Sarah Tabrizi, and Geraint Rees. He uses behavioural paradigms, computational modelling and neuroimaging to better understand the mechanisms driving loss of motivation in the general population and patients with Huntington’s disease, a familial neurodegenerative condition. Before moving to UCL, Akshay was a NIHR-funded Academic Clinical Fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry (KCL) where he did research in schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease. He completed his medical degree, and an intercalated degree in neuroscience, at Oxford University.

scholar | twitter | Email: akshay.nair (ucl.ac.uk)

 

Joey Heffner
Postdoctoral researcher

Joey is a postdoctoral associate at Yale in the Rutledge Lab. He received his PhD from Brown University under the mentorship of Oriel FeldmanHall, where he studied how violations of emotion expectations predict social decisions such as punishing norm transgressors. His current research combines computational modelling, longitudinal experience sampling, and neuroimaging to explore questions like: What is the functional role of emotions in learning and choice? How are emotions organized and related to low-level constructs like mood and core affect? How do different symptoms of depression including apathy, avolition, and low mood relate to everyday decisions? Joey is interested in identifying computational assays and brain networks that map onto different depression dimensions. 

website | scholar | twitter | Email: joseph.heffner

 

XIHAN ZHANG
PHD STUDENT

Xihan is a Psychology PhD student at Yale in the Rutledge Lab. Xihan’s current interest focuses on the naturalistic affective dynamics and their relationship with depressive symptoms. Xihan completed a bachelor’s degree in biotechnology at the Ocean University of China. She additionally received an MS in Computational Biology at Harvard and worked as a lab manager at the University of Chicago.

Email: xihan.zhang

 

Kathy SHi
pHD STUDENT

Kathy is a Psychology PhD student at Yale in the Rutledge Lab. She is interested in how current and past decisions affect mood in people with and without mood disorders, and how this might appear in neural signals during neuroimaging. Kathy received her BS in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science at Johns Hopkins University. During her time there, she investigated the neural correlates of emotional memory.

Email: kathy.shi

 
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GLORIA FENG
PhD student

Gloria is a Psychology PhD student at Yale in the Rutledge Lab. She is interested in computational modeling of smartphone-based data to examine mood disorders. Gloria received her AB in Behavioral Decision Science from Brown University. As an undergraduate, she did research on value-based decision making and information seeking, and also worked as a UI/UX Designer for technology startups.

website | twitter | Email: gloria.feng

 
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hUW JARVIS
VISITING phd CANDIDATE

Huw is a Fulbright Future Scholar visiting the Rutledge Lab from the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health at Monash University, Australia. His PhD research is supervised by Trevor Chong and utilises novel behavioural paradigms combined with computational modelling to understand interactions between motivation and reward-based learning. Prior to his PhD, he completed studies in medical science (University of Tasmania) and public health (University of Melbourne), and worked in research translation at the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia’s leading expert body in health and medical research. Huw is interested in bringing computational psychiatry out of the lab and into the clinic with the aim of improving outcomes for people with psychiatric and neurological disease.

scholar | twitter | Email: huw.jarvis (monash.edu)

 
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jihyun hur
affiliate phd sTUDENT

Jihyun is a Clinical Psychology PhD student at Yale supervised by Jutta Joormann. She uses computational modeling and neuroimaging to reveal the latent decision-making processes in patients with mood disorders and to understand how momentary changes in individual mood states impact learning and decision making. After graduating with a BSBA in Accounting from Washington University in St. Louis with Honors in Management, she completed her MA in Clinical Psychology at Seoul National University supervised by Woo-Young Ahn. In her MA research, she investigated the association between worry and model-based reinforcement learning. She also served as a practice clinician at the university counseling center. Jihyun hopes to utilize computational models to help patients with major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders restore happiness in their lives.

website | scholar | twitter | Email: jihyun.hur

 
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millie Lawrence
Research Technician

Millie is a postgraduate research technician in the Rutledge Lab. She is interested in how mood disorders and neurodegenerative disease can affect decision making, and how longitudinal smartphone-based data can be used to measure this. She is currently studying how Parkinson's disease and aging can affect the relationship between mood and decision making. Millie is also mentored by Carolyn Fredericks at the Yale Clinical Neurosciences Imaging Center, where she is researching preclinical Alzheimer's disease. She received her BSc in Psychology from the University of Bath.

Email: millie.lawrence

 

katie Myerscough
Research Technician

Katie is a postgraduate research technician in the Rutledge Lab. She is interested in understanding how affective mechanisms such as emotion dysregulation can confer risk for mood disorders such as depression and how they can impact cognitive processes such as decision making. Previously, Katie studied how Parkinson’s disease can affect the relationship between mood and decision making and investigated the influence of psychosis on learning and memory. She received her BSc in Psychology from Cardiff University.

Email: katie.myerscough

 

ELLEN MARTIN
RESEARCH TECHNICIAN

Ellen is a postgraduate research technician in the Rutledge Lab. She is interested in using computational methods to understand the effect of anxiety on mood during risky decision-making tasks. She received her BSc in Psychology from UCL and her MRes in Developmental Neuroscience and Psychopathology from UCL.

Email: e.martin

 

Junxi Chen
Research technician

Junxi is a postgraduate research technician in the Rutledge Lab. He is interested in understanding the computational mechanisms of learning and decision-making and how they are impacted by psychiatric disorders. He received his B.S. in Computational Neuroscience and Mathematics from the University of Southern California. At USC, he investigated reinforcement learning and Bayesian models of learning under uncertainty.

Email: junxi.chen

 

Karen Chen
Masters Research Technician

Karen is a masters student in UCL’s MRes in Developmental Neuroscience and Psychopathology who is currently completing her research placement at the Rutledge Lab. She is interested in understanding the computational mechanisms underpinning mood dynamics, and how it differs between healthy individuals and individuals with mood disorders. She hopes to utilise computational methods to support the development of clinical tools to better predict changes in symptoms of mood disorders.

Email: karen.chen

 

Christina Adcock
Lab Manager and Research Technician

Christina is the lab manager and research technician for the Rutledge Lab. She was a BSc psychology undergraduate at Cardiff University. She coordinates smartphone platform development and runs day-to-day operations for the lab. Christina is interested in using such platforms to collection psychological data on decision making and mood disorders. She previously worked on research exploring how happiness is affected by the facial feedback hypothesis.

Email: christina.adcock

 

Alumni