People

Falk Lieder
Lab Director

Dr. Lieder’s fascination with psychological science started early. He was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to publish his first scientific article while he was still in high school. To prepare himself for rigorous, quantitative psychological research, he completed two simultaneous bachelor’s degrees in Cognitive Science and in Mathematics/Computer Science at the University of Osnabrück (Germany). Dr. Lieder then obtained his master’s degree in Neural Systems and Computation at ETH Zurich (Switzerland).

After working as a research assistant in Klaas Stephan’s Translational Neuromodeling Unit at the University of Zurich, he completed his Ph.D. in Tom Griffiths’s Computational Cognitive Science Lab at UC Berkeley in May 2018. His dissertation was awarded the Glushko Dissertation Prize in Cognitive Science. He then became a Max Planck Research Group Leader at the MPI for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen, Germany, where he led the Rationality Enhancement Group until June 2023. He moved to the psychology department of UCLA in July 2023.

Dr. Lieder has published 50 peer-reviewed articles that have collectively been cited more than 4500 times. He was the lead organizer of the inaugural Life Improvement Science conference. His most influential contribution to cognitive science thus far has been the development of a new cognitive modeling paradigm known as resource-rational analysis (Lieder & Griffiths, 2020).

Glen William Spiteri
Graduate Student

Glen is a PhD student in Cognitive Psychology at the Rational Altruism Lab, UCLA. He is interested in pro-social behavior and moral decision-making, with particular emphasis on effective altruism topics. Glen received his B.Com.(Hons) degree in Economics and Public Policy from the University of Malta, and his M.Sc. in Behavioral Science from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Zahra Tahmasebi
Lab Manager

Zahra joined the Rational Altruism Lab in Fall 2023. She is interested in moral behavior and decision-making. Her current research focuses on the role of negligence in moral judgment of accidents. Zahra earned her bachelor’s degree in Counseling & Guidance from the University of Tehran in Iran, and her master’s in Experimental Psychology from California State University, Fullerton.

Eden Alter
Undergraduate Research Assistant

Eden is a senior at UCLA, studying Cognitive Science with Departmental Honors and a Computing Specialization. She is particularly interested in exploring factors that motivate altruistic decision-making and whether certain people have a higher propensity for acting in such ways. On a broader level, Eden hopes to investigate the relationship between altruistic decision-making and other concepts such as emotional perspective-taking, theory of mind, and various mental health conditions.

Sonia Teo
Undergraduate Research Assistant

Sonia is a second-year undergraduate at UCLA, majoring in Cognitive Science with a Computing Specialization, and minoring in Data Science Engineering and Professional Writing. She is interested in moral learning, empathy, and the gap between individuals’ values and their actual behavior. Ultimately, Sonia hopes to explore how insights about the psychology of behavior and decision-making can inform policies to create a more compassionate society.

Charlotte Riedl
Undergraduate Research Assistant

Charlotte is a third year undergraduate student at UCLA majoring in Cognitive Science and Economics. She is interested in delving into the roots of altruism in humanity in an effort to help address stagnant issues in our social structures in a productive way. Through investigating morally complex decision-making, learning, and reflecting, she hopes to bring a new perspective across disciplines, specifically in the field of criminal law, to help better the justice system.

Seamus Kim
Undergraduate Research Assistant

Seamus is a third-year at UCLA majoring in Cognitive Science and minoring in Philosophy and Global Studies. He is currently a research assistant at the Rational Altruism Lab, working on investigating the effects of moral reflection on moral decision-making. He is broadly interested in using scientific approaches to reveal actionable insights about long-standing philosophical issues, both analytic and continental, especially as they relate to governance, conflict, and diplomacy. He is a strong believer in moral realism and that synergies between cognitive science and philosophy can give way to objective truths about justice and freedom that can help ground ethical discussions in the contemporary world.

Teshinee (Tinn) Kukamjad
Undergraduate Research Assistant

Tinn is a second-year undergraduate at UCLA, majoring in Cognitive Science and minoring in Data Science Engineering. Her interest lies in exploring decision-making strategies to optimize goal-setting and planning. Specifically, she is interested in designing simulation environments or software to promote personal growth and guide long-term decision-making. Currently, she is working on a gamification project to enhance the learning experience.

Catherine Saffi
Undergraduate Research Assistant

Catherine is a second-year undergraduate student at UCLA majoring in Cognitive Science with a specialization in Computing. She is passionate about psychology and childhood development, and is especially interested in how the brain supports learning, moral growth, and decision-making. Her current research explores how people learn from thought experiments designed to promote sustainability and compassion for future generations, using ChatGPT to analyze participant responses. Through this work, she hopes to better understand how technology can support prosocial development and intergenerational responsibility.

Prarepim Adunpadungsak
Undergraduate Research Assistant

Prarepim is a second-year undergraduate student at UCLA, majoring in Cognitive Science and Economics. She is particularly interested in understanding how people make decisions that balance self-interest with concern for others. She believes that by studying how people navigate conflicts between personal and collective interests, we can discover strategies to foster more altruistic behavior and improve societal well-being.

Wakana Matsumoto
Undergraduate Research Assistant

Wakana is a third-year undergraduate student at UCLA, majoring in psychology. She is interested in decision-making mechanisms in social contexts, particularly how social, cultural, and situational factors influence individuals’ behavior. She aspires to contribute to resolving social issues through psychological approaches, which motivates her to uncover scientific interventions to promote prosocial behaviors among the wider population.

Zeyiting Gao
Undergraduate Research Assistant

Zeyiting is a third-year undergraduate student majoring in Applied Psychology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. He is passionate about psychology and philosophy and aims to integrate these disciplines in his future academic work. He is interested in moral learning, metacognition, and altruistic decision-making. He seeks to translate psychological insights into practical strategies that promote altruistic behavior and enhance societal well-being. His current research is about ways to expand prosocial behavior toward distant others.

Ruiqi He
Graduate Student

Ruiqi is a PhD student in the Rationality Enhancement Group at Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen. Her research focuses on understanding how people learn how to plan. For this, she designs, conducts online experiments to collect human behavior data and apply metacognitive reinforcement learning models to explain the underlying learning mechanism. Ruiqi received her B.Sc. Statistics and Economics as well as M.Sc. Computational Statistics and Machine Learning from University College London (UCL).