Lab Members

Meet our group


John Pearson

Principal Investigator

John earned his bachelor's degree in physics and math from the University of Kentucky and his PhD in physics from Princeton. He became a neuroscientist at Duke, where he did his postdoctoral training with Michael Platt, working on the neurobiology of reward and decision-making. From 2015 to 2018, he was an Assistant Research Professor in the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. In 2018, he moved back to the School of Medicine as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biostatistics & Bioinformatics, with secondary appointments in the departments of Psychology & Neuroscience and Neurobiology.




Kelsey McDonald

CNAP Graduate Student

Kelsey is a graduate student in the CNAP program at Duke University. She received a BA in Psychology from Princeton University, writing a senior thesis in computational reinforcement learning under Dr. Yael Niv. Before coming to Duke, she was a research assistant in Dr. Catherine Hartley's lab at Weill Cornell Medicine, studying the neurodevelopment of learning and decision making. At Duke, she is focusing on using computational models to study neuroeconomics, learning, and decision making. Outside of the lab, she loves to cook, read, and play with her husky puppy, Khaleesi.




Lun (Sam) Yin

Research Associate

Sam obtained his BS degree from Duke University with a major in statistical science and a minor in neuroscience. He joined the lab after graduation. His research interests include Bayesian inference, nonparametric models, and interpretable machine learning with application primarily in biology and neuroscience.






Sujal Manohar

Undergraduate Researcher

Sujal is a third-year undergraduate majoring in Neuroscience and Visual Arts at Duke University. She is focusing on using eye tracking to understand implicit legal judgments and visual perception. She will complete her second semester of Independent Study in Fall 2018. Apart from research, she is the Photography Editor for The Chronicle, a Baldwin Scholar, and a volunteer with Arts for Life at Duke Hospital.




Former members

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