Alumna chosen as Rising Star

  • December 30, 2015
Alumna chosen as Rising Star

Molly Crockett is selected as a Rising Star in the Association for Psychological Science.

A Gates Cambridge alumna has been selected as a Rising Star in the Association for Psychological Science, reflecting the best and brightest of psychological science.

Molly Crockett is one of the 2015 Rising Stars. The awards recognises outstanding psychological scientists in the earliest stages of their research career post-PhD whose innovative work has already advanced the field and signals great potential for their continued contributions.

Molly [2006], who is  director of the Crockett Lab in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, did her PhD in Experimental Psychology at the University of Cambridge where she was a Gates Cambridge Scholar. For her PhD she explored the neural mechanisms of human motivation and decision-making. She focused in particular on how serotonin influences decision-making in social contexts. She said: "I am honoured to be recognized among such a stellar group of scientists, and very grateful to my mentors for their guidance and inspiration."

The Crockett Lab investigates the psychological and neural mechanisms of social decision-making and impression formation. Its approach integrates social psychology, behavioral economics, neuroscience and philosophy and it uses a range of methods including behavioral experiments, computational modeling, brain imaging and pharmacology.

After leaving Cambridge Molly worked with economists and neuroscientists at the University of Zürich and University College London, studying human decision-making with the support of a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship before taking up her current post at Oxford where she is also Associate Professor of Experimental Psychology.

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