2018 FACULTY
ALESSANDRO
DURANTI
UCLA
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I study agency, intentionality and intersubjectivity in verbal and visual communication in political arenas, everyday life, and during music performance and rehearsals.
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ANDREW
WHITEN
University of St Andrews
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My research focuses on the evolution of social learning, traditions and culture, which I study in human and non-human primates, especially chimpanzees.
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CAT
HOBAITER
University of St Andrews
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I study the evolution of communication, language, and social behavior through long-term, comparative field studies of wild apes.
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CRISTINE
LEGARE
UT Austin
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I examine the interplay of the universal human mind and the variations of human culture to address fundamental questions about cognitive and cultural evolution.
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DAVID
KRAKAUER
Santa Fe Institute
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My research focuses on the evolutionary history of information processing mechanisms in biology and culture, including genetic, neural, linguistic and cultural mechanisms.
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ELINOR
OCHS
UCLA​
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Primary among my many research interests is the role of language and culture in life span human development and learning across social groups.
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EÖRS
SZATHMÁRY
Eötvös Loránd University
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I focus on the common principles of the major steps in evolution, such as the origin of life, the emergence of cells, the origin of animal societies, and the appearance of human language.
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​ERICA CARTMILL
UCLA
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I study the acquisition and evolution of human language. My work bridges anthropology and psychology and involves both comparative and developmental approaches to communication.
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photo credit: KMUW
FRANS
DE WAAL
Emory University
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I draw parallels between primate and human behavior. My latest research concerns empathy and cooperation, inequity aversion and social cognition in chimpanzees, bonobos, and other species.
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​HOIFUNG
POON
Microsoft
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My research interest can be summed up as developing "AI for Precision Medicine" to overcome bottlenecks in deciphering cancer and other complex diseases.
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​JACOB
FOSTER
UCLA
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I am interested in the birth, life, and death of ideas. Fundamentally, I aim to understand the social world as constituted by, and constitutive of, ideas, beliefs, and practices.
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JESSICA
FLACK
Santa Fe Institute
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My particular interests are in the role of collective computation/intelligence in the origin of space and time scales and in the emergence of robust structure and function in nature and society.
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photo credit: UAB Divulga
JOSEP
CALL
University of St. Andrews
My research focuses on technical and social problem solving in animals with a special emphasis on the great apes. Ultimately, my goal is to elucidate how cognition evolves.
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JOSH
TENENBAUM
MIT
My colleagues and I seek to understand the everyday inductive leaps humans make in computational terms, which we apply to building powerful learning machines.
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MICHAEL
OSBORNE
University of Oxford
I work to develop machine intelligence in sympathy with societal needs. I have deep interests in the broader societal consequences of machine learning and robotics.
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RICHARD
BYRNE
University of St. Andrews
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I study the evolution of cognitive and social behaviour, particularly the origins of distinctively human characteristics.
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RONJON
NAG
Stanford University
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My interests are in the computational modeling of intelligence and ways to accelerate entrepreneurial translation of these concepts into products.
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​STEPHEN VAISEY
Duke University
The main goal of my research is to understand moral and political beliefs: what they are, where they come from, and what they do.
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SUE
HEALY
University of St. Andrews
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I investigate cognitive abilities in non-model organisms such as hummingbirds, zebra finches and bowerbirds and I am especially interested in 'animal cognition in the wild.’
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SUSAN
GOLDIN-MEADOW
University of Chicago
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My research identifies the fundamental properties of language and explores how gesture and spoken language shapes thought and cognitive development.
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VINCENT
JANIK
University of St. Andrews
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I investigate environmental constraints that influence the design of vocal communication systems and study the underlying cognitive skills required to overcome or circumvent such constraints.
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photo credit: BBC Radio Scotland