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Lay detail

• Professor of Cognitive Engineering and Human Factors (Joint appointment: School of Psychology, School of ITEE, School of Clinical Medicine)
• Leader, Cognitive Engineering Research Group (CERG).
• Leader, Cognitive Systems Engineering Group, School of ITEE.
• Responsible for development and operation of the University of Queensland Usability Laboratory (UQUL).
• Director of ARC Key Centre for Human Factors and Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2004-2007.
• Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA).
• Fellow of the USA-based Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES).
• Fellow of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA)

Background:

• Adjunct Professor, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1997-2006.
• Professor of Computer Science (HCI), Swinburne University of Technology, 1997-2001.
• Assistant and then tenured Associate Professor of Psychology, M&IE, and Aviation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1985-1996.

Editorial responsibilities

• Associate Editor, Human Factors in Healthcare, 2021-present
• Regional Editor, Cognition Technology and Work, 2000-present.
• Consulting Editor, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 2005-2011, 2013-present
• Editorial Board, Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making, 2005-present.
• Editorial Board, Human Factors, 1986-1997, 2005-2013, 2016-present.
• Associate Editor, Human Factors, 2014-2015.
• Associate Editor, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied: 2012-2013.
• Associate Editor, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 2002-2005.

Dr Chase Sherwell is a Research Fellow at the UQ Learning Lab and the Principal Research Technician for the Compassionate Mind Research Group in the School of Psychology. His research combines neuroscientific, psychological, and educational perspectives to provide tools for enacting learning, well-being, and behavioural change in real-world contexts. With a focus on application, Dr Sherwell’s work aims to identify metrics of internal psychological mechanisms that can be easily interpreted and integrated by professionals and end-users to facilitate skill development and mental health in everyday life.

With a background in cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and education research, Dr Sherwell leads projects that aim to explain learning, development, and mental health across disciplinary lines: from the level of neural networks through to everyday experience. Integrating multi-modal techniques including digital interaction, biometrics, and neurophysiology, Dr Sherwell develops tools, user experiences, and analytics that provide actionable metrics and insights for professionals and researchers.

Dr Sherwell is a Research Fellow in the UQ Learning Lab: a team of multi-disciplinary researchers, educators, and industry partners who collaborate to transform learning, teaching, and training in diverse school and post-school environments through the science of learning. In this role, Dr Sherwell lends his expertise in cognitive neuroscience and psychology to develop projects aimed at understanding and measuring the barriers, facilitators, and mechanisms of self-regulation in professional contexts. He leads projects designing digital tools providing educators with real-time feedback on learner states and skill development integrating smartphone apps and biometrics from wearable devices.

Dr Sherwell is also the Principal Research Technician for the Compassionate Mind Research Group – the leading research hub for Compassion Science in Australia, based at the UQ School of Psychology. In this role, he oversees research design and development across projects investigating the mechanisms of prosocial behaviour in everyday life, barriers to clinical interventions, and the efficacy of online interventions for mental health.

Virginia Slaughter is Professor of Psychology at the University of Queensland, Australia, where she founded the Early Cognitive Development Centre. Her research focuses on social and cognitive development in infants and young children, with particular emphasis on social behaviour in infancy, theory-of-mind development and the acquisition of peer interaction skills. She is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.

Thomas grew up in Germany and joined UQ in 1999 following postgraduate studies in New Zealand. He investigates the mental capacities in young children and in animals to answer fundamental questions about the nature and evolution of the human mind. His research has attracted several awards (incl. from the Australian Academy of Social Sciences, the Australian Psychological Society and the American Psychological Association) and his critically acclaimed book The Gap (e.g. see reviews in Nature, Science or the Wall Street Journal) is currently being translated into several languages.

Dr Daniel Sullivan is a Clinical Psychologist and Adjunct Lecturer in the Child Health Research Centre, The University of Queensland. In his clinical role, Dr Sullivan leads a program of research to design Australia's first psychology extended scope of practice model of care for limited pharmacotherapy management, with an emphasis on deprescribing hypnotic medicines in the public sector sleep psychology setting (ExPEDiTe Sleep project). As a member of the Let’s Yarn about Sleep group at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Dr Sullivan is working to improve sleep health equity for First Nations Australians through community co-designed, culturally responsive sleep programs which harmonise sleep science with Indigenous Australian perspectives and knowledges about sleep.

Dr Sullivan’s research and clinical expertise is in the behavioural aspects of sleep; he is an Editor of the journal Research Directions: Sleep Psychology (Cambridge University Press) and is board certified by the US-based Board of Behavioral Sleep Medicine. Dr Sullivan completed postgraduate training in sleep at the University of Sydney (MSc), and his PhD in Clinical Psychology at Griffith University, where his doctoral research examined psychological factors involved in sleep-related headaches.

I'm a Professor of Cognitive Science at The University of Queensland, originally hailing from Alberta, Canada. I received my BASc in Philosophy and Psychology from The University of Lethbridge, my PhD in Psychology from McMaster University, and held a postdoctoral fellowship at UNSW before joining UQ in 2006.

Much of our work is at the intersection of cognitive science and artificial intelligence, exploring how generative AI can enhance learning and cognition. We're excited about the potential for these tools to provide personalised feedback, correct misconceptions, and create more engaging educational experiences.

But we’re not just focused on AI. We also explore the quirks of human thinking, particularly the biases that shape our judgments in contexts ranging from daily life to high-stakes decision-making. By unraveling these mental shortcuts, we aim to develop strategies that enable clearer thinking, more effective reasoning, and ultimately, wiser choices in the face of complexity and uncertainty.

I've been lucky to work with some truly brilliant students and collaborators over the years. It's a pleasure to come to the lab every day and tackle these fascinating questions together.

Dr. Jess Taubert was awarded the ARC Future Fellowship and moved to the University of Queensland in 2021.

She completed a Bachelor of Science Degree with Honours at Macaquarie University (2005) and a PhD in Psychology at the University of Sydney (2009). In 2009 she accepted a postdoctoral position at Emory University (GA, USA). Here she worked jointly with Lisa Parr at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Philippe Rochat in the Department of Psychology. In 2011 Dr. Taubert was awarded a FSR incoming postdoctoral fellowship by UCLouvain and moved to Belgium to train as a neurophysiologist (supervised by Rufin Vogels, Wim Vanduffel, and Bruno Rossion). After briefly returning to Australia, Dr. Taubert was appointed as an Intramural Research Fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health in the US (2016 – 2021). During this time she worked with Leslie Ungerleider, Chris Baker, David Leopold, and Elisabeth ("Betsy") Murray among others.

Prof. Guy Wallis studies visual recognition and visuomotor behaviour. His investigations combine computational modelling with data drawn from behavioural studies. Many of these behavioural studies are conducted in computer-controlled, virtual environments.

Guy holds an undergraduate degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering (Imperial College, London) and a PhD in Visual Neuroscience (Oxford University, UK). He joined the School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences in 1998 after a three year period as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Germany. His research has been funded by the Australian Research Council, the Human Frontier Science Program, and the Wellcome Trust, as well as through industry partnerships with the Queensland Construction Training Centre, the Australian Coal Association Research Program, Queensland Health, the US Air Force and Boeing.

• ARC Medical Research Advisory Group (2022-2024)
• Elected Fellow of the Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences (2022)
• ARC College of Experts (2019-2021)
• CSIRO CSS Human Research Ethics Committee member (2020-2022)
• UQ Health and Behavioural Sciences Faculty, HDR Supervision Award (2018)
• ARC Future Fellowship (2011-2014)
• ARC QEII Fellowship (2003-2007)
• UQ Postdoctoral Fellowship (2001-2003)

I am a cognitive neuroscientist with a research focus on the neural basis of language. My research is focused on three related questions:

1. How is language processed in the brain?
2. How does brain damage affect language processing in individuals with aphasia, i.e. acquired language disorders?
3. What brain mechanisms support the recovery of language processing in people with aphasia who improve over time?

To address these questions, my lab studies individuals with aphasia, as well as healthy participants with normal language, using a range of state-of-the-art functional and structural neuroimaging techniques. We combine our multimodal imaging approach with comprehensive language assessments designed to quantify deficits in different components of the language processing system, such as syntactic structure, word meanings, and the selection and assembly of speech sounds.

Language Neuroscience Laboratory