Deng Pan (潘登)

Deng received his BS in psychological and cognitive sciences from Peking University (PKU), Beijing, China. He is an graduate student (DPhil) at Univeristy of Oxford , Department of Experimental Psychology, working with Dr. Matthew Rushworth. His research interests focus on understanding the neural and computational mechanisms underlying our social decisions. Outside of research, he enjoys reading novels, swimming, and mountain climbing. Actually, his name in Chinese means ‘climbing’.

Links: 【CV】 【Email】 【GitHub】 【YouTube】 【Twitter】

Biography

‘Social decision-making research is like playing games!’ I said excitedly one night, after sitting four hours in my chair analyzing data.

As a biology major at Peking University, I accidentally walked into a classroom teaching Game Theory. I was fascinated by how simple mathematics can capture our complex behaviors. After taking this course, I realized that besides the ‘biological nature’, I also cared about the ‘social nature’ of human beings. I decided to change my major to Psychology and embarked on an exciting journey of social decision-making research.

During my undergraduate years, I worked with Dr. Jian Li and Dr. Lusha Zhu researching the social contagion effect of risk and ambiguity. By taking this project from idea, execution, and writing manuscripts, I sharpened my skills and gained a deeper understanding of decision-making. Here’s the poster and the 5-min video for the 19th Annual Meeting of the Society for NeuroEconomics (2021).

I also had other experiences, like working with Dr. Oriel FeldmanHall studying how our affective states influence social decisions. Please see my Curriculum Vitae for more details.

After graduatation, I work currently as a research assistant with Dr. Matthew Rushworth investigating social learning during decision making. I am interested in how the global reward states of the environment (poor/rich) modulate our learning about others’ social characters and their potential neural mechanisms (especially the role of dorsal raphe nuclei).

I am delighted to announce that I will be an incoming PhD student at Oxford Univeristy, Department of Experimental Psychology, working with Dr. Matthew Rushworth. So lucky to have this opportunity. Many thanks to all people who helped me during my application season!

Favorite words

“Nothing is to be feared, only to be understood.” by Maria Curie.