I am Juniorprofessor (Asst. Professor) for Big Data in Psychology at the Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID). I primarily investigate how morality permeates human communication and how moralized messages are cognitively processed and motivate behavior. My recent work studies how neural activation patterns give rise to moral decisions, and how large language models align with humans’ moral judgments. To advance my research, I leverage a combination of natural language processing, functional neuroimaging, machine learning, and (large-scale) behavorial experiments.

My work has been published in scientific journals including Nature Human Behavior, Journal of Communication, Behavior Research Methods, Communication Methods & Measures, and Computational Communication Research. I completed my Ph.D. in communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where I worked as a data scientist in Dr. Rene Weber’s Media Neuroscience Lab. Before joining the ZPID, I was Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam’s School of Communication Research.

Besides research, I play guitar and piano, enjoy endurance sports, love reading (follow me on goodreads), hike, and brew coffee.