Prof. Liad Mudrik

Prof. Liad Mudrik is a researcher at the school of psychological sciences and Sagol school of neuroscience at the Tel Aviv University. Her research focuses on conscious experience – asking first if it plays a functional role in thinking and behavior, second – how it is affected by our semantic knowledge and expectations, and third - how it comes about, or what are the neural mechanisms underlying it. Her lab at TAU pursues these questions using mostly EEG and psychophysics, with a very strong emphasis on finding new ways to scientifically study consciousness in a more ecological manner (using both virtual and augmented reality). The lab strongly emphasized open science practices, both with respect to preregistrations and to data and material sharing.

Mudrik started her academic career as student of the interdisciplinary program for outstanding students. She completed two Ph.D. dissertations at Tel Aviv University: her Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience (psychology department) focused on the role of consciousness and attention in processing contextual violations. Her Ph.D. in philosophy was a descriptive-deconstructive analysis of the mind-body problem in neuroscience. She then continued to a postdoctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology, in Christof Koch's lab. In 2015, she began her appointment as a faculty member in Tel Aviv University. Since then, she has been awarded with several grants, including HFSP’s Career Development Award, the Marie Curie fellowship, and two large-scale consortiums, involving philosophers and neuroscientists, in an attempt to study volition and conscious experience.