Clare Press (Head)

After my doctoral training I held three ESRC and MRC fellowships. I took up my first faculty position at the University of Reading, before moving to my current position at Birkbeck in 2012. In 2021 I was appointed a Principal Investigator at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, UCL, and made a full professor.

Emma Ward (Postdoctoral researcher)

I joined the lab in December 2021 as a postdoc, and I am specifically interested in working together with Prof Clare Press to ask how people distinguish between incoming sensory information that is a useful basis for forming future expectations and incoming sensory information that is irrelevant or unreliable. For my PhD I studied this process in autism, at the Donders Institute in Nijmegen, supervised by Prof Sabine Hunnius and Prof Jan Buitelaar. sites.google.com/view/emma-k-ward

Quirin Gehmacher (Postdoctoral researcher)

In 2023, I completed my PhD in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Salzburg under the supervision of Prof. Nathan Weisz. My research focuses on auditory perception and active sensing with a special interest in how the oculomotor system is linked to – and potentially links – auditory and visual processing. Afterwards, I joined Prof. Clare Press and her Action and Perception Lab as a Postdoctoral Researcher in late 2023 to investigate sampling routines as a Bayesian learning account.

Abbie Bradshaw (Postdoctoral researcher)

I completed my BA and DPhil in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford. I then completed my post-doc at UCL, investigating the effects of sensorimotor interactions on speech production. I currently hold a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, studying the neural computations underlying predictive processes during speech production and perception. This project involves collaboration with Prof Clare Press and Dr Matt Davis.

James Chard (PhD student)

I completed my MSc in Psychology at Birkbeck as a mature student in 2014, having previously completed a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University, and worked as a lawyer for several years. I joined the Action Lab as a part-time PhD student focusing on low level visual perception in healthy aging and how changes here relate to those in social perception and agency.

Kirsten Rittershofer (PhD student)

I have previously completed my BSc in Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabrück and my MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience at Radboud University, Nijmegen. Currently, I am a PhD student under the supervision of Clare Press and Peter Kok. During my PhD, I will examine how perception is shaped by likely future actions.

Nicholas Simpson (PhD student)

I completed an MEng in Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College London focussing on computational neuroscience, modelling, and medical imaging. Now, I am a PhD student investigating the perceptual prediction paradox under the supervision of Clare Press.

Aaron Kaltenmaier (PhD student)

I completed an MRes in Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London investigating the distinct roles of different kinds of visual expectations. In my PhD with Clare, we are focusing on the role of learning in shaping perceptual sampling rhythms. We are doing so in collaboration with Matt Davis and Peter Kok.

Cristiano Costa (PhD student)

I completed my BSc in Cognitive Sciences and Psychobiology, and MSc in Neuroscience and Neuropsychological Rehabilitation at University of Padova, Italy. Currently enrolled in the PhD Course in Neuroscience at the Padova Neuroscience Center, I will spend one year as a visiting PhD under the supervision of Clare Press. My projects aim at investigating predictions driven by facially expressed emotions.

Bayparvah Kaur Gehdu (PhD student)

I completed my MSc in Clinical Neurodevelopmental Sciences at King’s College, London in 2019, having previously completed a BSc in Psychology specialising in cognitive and clinical neuroscience at City, University of London in 2018. Currently, I’m a PhD student under the supervision of Richard Cook and Clare Press, funded by Birkbeck’s Diversity100 studentship. During my PhD, I will examine the perceptual underpinnings of face recognition in autistic individuals.