Overview

Dr. Elliott Wimmer received a PhD at Columbia University, followed by postdoctoral research at the University Medical Center in Hamburg, Stanford University, and UCL. He is now an MRC Fellow and Senior Research Associate at UCL in the Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research. His research is focused on the cognitive and neural systems underlying learning, memory, and decision-making.

Inspired by our rich experience as we move through the world, we strive to develop experiments that can illuminate core functions, with an aim toward informing the study of dysfunctions in psychiatric disorders. How do our experiences influence our later choices? Learning and memory encompasses the mechanisms that allow us to associate a particular food with a positive outcome, which can be composed of single episodes, and perhaps eventually building robust and inflexible ‘habit’-like associations. These stored memories can then guide, implicitly or explicitly, our future decisions.

As a PI, Dr. Wimmer leads the Learning Memory & Decision (LMD) group of the Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research. The Centre is part of the Department of Imaginge Neuroscience and associated with the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroscience (FIL), within the Institite of Neurology at Queen Square.

Education

• Bachelor of Arts; Cognitive Science, University of California, Berkeley (2005)
• PhD; Psychology, Columbia University (2007-2012)
• Postdoctoral Research Associate, Prof Christian Büchel, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany (2013-2015)
• Postdoctoral Research Associate, Prof Russ Poldrack, Stanford University (2016-2017)
• Postdoctoral Research Associate, Prof Ray Dolan, UCL, London, UK (2017-2021)