John Kiat

I’m John Kiat, currently at the University of California-Davis working with Steve Luck at the Laboratory for Basic and Translational Cognitive Neuroscience.

The questions that I’m currently interested in are, How does the act of seeing something change the way we feel, and conversely, how do our mental states change the way we “see” the world? The quest to find answers to these questions has brought me across the world working with some of the leading researchers in the field on all sorts of exciting questions and problems on the daily.

Given how rich the landscape of available research methods currently is, I find a great deal of value in having a large toolkit in working on big questions. Accordingly, I typically find myself combining neural measures (most frequently electrical activity recorded from the scalp (i.e. EEG)) with machine-learning techniques, eye-tracking, and cognitive behavioral testing both in-lab and “biggish” data collection via online platforms. I have a particularly high level of expertise in electroencephalography where I leverage a range of supervised learning methods to expand on traditional component-driven methods to shed light on important aspects of how our brains process visual inputs. 

Over my career, I had the privilege of being mentored by and collaborating with individuals from a diverse range of disciplines (a big shout out to Steve Luck, Bob Belli, Jacob Cheadle, Mike Dodd, Dennis Molfese, Lesa Hoffman, Jonathan Templin, and everyone who has helped me move forward in so many different ways).

Click here to download a copy of my current CV or here to shoot me a message via an interactive web form.