Weiji Ma Lab at New York University

Weiji Ma

Weiji Ma is Silver Professor of Neural Science and Psychology at New York University. After obtaining his Ph.D. in Physics, he transitioned to computational neuroscience and computational cognitive science. He has directed his own research group since 2008. Ma investigates how people make decisions under uncertainty in the realms of planning, problem-solving, perception, attention, and memory. His work has been cited over 17,000 times. Ma is the director of the NIH-funded Training Program in Computational Neuroscience. As Director of Community-Building and Outreach in the Center for Neural Science and the Department of Psychology, he has initiated and developed programs to broaden participation in science, improve mentorship, and involve scientists in discussions about social justice. Ma founded the "Growing up in Science" mentorship series, in which scientists tell their life stories with an emphasis on doubts, struggles, and failures. Ma is a founding member of the Scientist Action and Advocacy Network, which provides pro-bono science to social and environmental non-profit organizations. Ma is a recipient of the Jeffrey L. Elman Prize for Scientific Achievement and Community Building from the Cognitive Science Society and of the Award for Education in Neuroscience from the Society for Neuroscience.

Long bio

Weiji Ma is Professor of Neural Science and Psychology at NYU. His lab studies decision-making in perception, attention, working memory, social cognition, and planning, using a combination of human behavioral experiments, computational modeling, and - through collaboration - electrophysiology and neuroimaging. Ma grew up in the Netherlands and received M.Sc.s in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Groningen. He did his Ph.D. in Physics at the same place, but was mostly supervised by Erik Verlinde at Utrecht University and Princeton University. He continued as a postdoc in computational neuroscience, first with Christof Koch at Caltech and then with Alexandre Pouget at the University of Rochester. Along the way, he became more interested and involved in experimental psychology and the mathematical modeling of cognition. He was Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine from 2008 to 2013. He has been at NYU since 2013, as full Professor since 2020. He has affiliate appointments in the Neuroscience Institute, the Institute for the Study of Decision Making, the Center for Data Science, and the Center for Experimental Social Science. Ma is the Program Director of the NIH-funded Training Program in Computational Neuroscience at NYU (2016-2021, 2023-present). Moreover, Ma is active in mentorship, community-building, and outreach. He is a founding member of the Scientist Action and Advocacy Network (founder: Will Adler) and of NeuWrite NYU (now defunct). Ma founded the Growing up in Science seminar series, in which scientists tell their "unofficial stories". Read or listen to Ma's own unofficial story. Besides his academic work, Ma is the co-founder (with Diane Geng and Sara Lam) of the Rural China Education Foundation. He enjoys strategy games, badminton, science-art collaborations, karaoke, immersive theater, and exploring food.