My research focuses on visual perception and cognition: how do we make sense from the light that hits our retinae, how do we recognize the objects in our environment despite dramatic variability in position, size, shape or texture, and how can we make meaningful decisions about the visual world around us.

My approach uses a combination of methods from cognitive psychology (psychophysics, cognitive modeling), computer science (machine learning / artificial intelligence) and neuroscience (functional magnetic resonance imaging, magnetoencephalography).

To make the results of my research questions as general as possible, I focus on the acquisition and analysis of large-scale data: Large samples of behavioral data using online crowdsourcing, and dense sampling of individual brains using neuroimaging.

I am a Professor for Computational Cognitive Neuroscience and Quantitative Psychiatry at Justus Liebig University Giessen and an Independent Max Planck research group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany. For more information, visit my lab website.