Our Team
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
aleshins@uci.edu
Dr Anna Leshinskaya
Dr Anna Leshinskaya is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Cognitive Sciences and Fellow at the Center for Neurobiology of Learning & Memory at UC Irvine, as well as an affiliated researcher with the AI Objectives Institute. She directs the Relational Cognition laboratory.
She earned a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from Harvard University in 2015. Her background and interests are in human cognitive neuroscience and computational cognitive science. She is broadly interested in the computational principles underlying the learning and representation of concepts and relations and how these are supported by both artificial and natural neural networks. Her recent work uses interpretability techniques to measure cognitive alignment between humans and large language models.
Follow me on Bluesky: @annaleshinskaya.bsky.social
POST-DOC FELLOW
mshinkle@uci.edu
Matthew Shinkle
Matthew is a postdoctoral researcher in the RelCog Lab, researching mechanisms of moral cognition in large language models and humans. He holds a PhD in neuroscience from the University of Nevada, Reno, where he studied how deep neural networks can be used as computational models of the human visual system.
GRADUATE STUDENT
m.smullen@uci.edu
Em Smullen
Em is a second-year PhD student in the Cognitive Science department. They study abstraction, relational reasoning, and concept representation in both human and artificial minds. Em is also interested in merging computational, philosophical, and psychological methods to understand the cognitive processes underlying moral judgment. Outside of lab, they can be found reading existentialist texts, lying in the grass, or producing odd performance art.
GRADUATE STUDENT
xiesl@uci.edu
Siwen Lucy Xie
Lucy is a first-year PhD student in the Cognitive Science department. She received her Bachelor's degrees in Artificial Intelligence and Psychology from Peking University. She is interested in using computational models to explore mysteries in the human mind, while also drawing inspiration for machine intelligence. Outside of academia, she enjoys reading and writing fiction, as well as making anime music videos.
LAB MANAGER
om.bhatt@uci.edu | Website
Om B. Bhatt
Om is a predoctoral researcher and lab manager at the RelCog Lab. He comes to UCI from Georgia Tech, where he earned an MS in Computer Science. He is interested in using language models as testbeds for theories of morality and social reasoning, as well as how neural data could inform our understanding of knowledge representation in models.
RESEARCH COLLABORATOR
seonghahcho@gmail.com
Seong Hah Cho
Seong is a researcher exploring how Large Language Models represent and process moral decisions, applying methods from mechanistic interpretability and cognitive science. He holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Hong Kong and currently works as a Data Scientist at a non-profit organization supporting smallholder farmers in Myanmar.
RESEARCH ENGINEER
Contact — LinkedIn
Stacey Svetlichnaya
Stacey is an AI ecosystem engineer supporting lab research projects. She wants to solve AI alignment and environmental sustainability through transparent and collaborative dev tools & practical implementations. She previously helped build Weights & Biases and holds an MS & BS from Stanford in Symbolic Systems.
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANT
junyil32@uci.edu
Claire Li
Claire is passionate about solving problems using AI and developing innovative ideas by leveraging AI technologies.
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANT
rylen.choi03@gmail.com
Rylen Choi
Rylen is a second-year Cognitive Sciences major excited to explore how abstractions in mental phenomena (i.e. bias, heuristics, ideology) can be interpreted by and applied to artificial intelligence. During her time at the Relational Cognition Lab, her aim is to develop her technical research skills as well as her conceptual knowledge of relational structures and cognitive frameworks. She is very thankful for this opportunity!
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANT
bingxij@uci.edu | Website
Paul Jiang
Paul is a computer science student passionate about building scalable systems and AI-driven applications that operate efficiently in real-world. His experience spans designing microservices, deploying LLM-powered applications, and optimizing systems for performance. In parallel, he is actively engaged in LLM research with hands-on experience evaluating and fine-tuning state-of-the-art models across diverse real-world use cases.
POST-BACC
RESEARCH ASSISTANT
aghalamb@uci.edu
Ariana Ghalambor
Ariana is a recent UCI graduate with interests in cognitive science and moral psychology. She is particularly interested in studying human and LLM morality to better understand processes underlying moral judgment. Outside of the lab, Ariana enjoys spending time with her dog and quilting.
Lab Alumni
Dr. Michael B. McCoy, Postdoc, 2024-2025
Srihari Thirumaligai, Undergraduate RA, 2024-2025
Collin Chen, Undergraduate RA, 2024-2025