Junpeng Lao, PhD

I am Junpeng Lao, currently a data scientist at Google (since mid-2018). Before that, I was a cognitive psychology researcher at the University of Fribourg.

With a background in Psychology (B.Sc. from Sun Yat-sen University and PhD from the University of Glasgow) and a deep interest in Mathematics and Computations, I study the computational nature of the neural system using various techniques including psychophysics, eye tracking, EEG, fMRI, and computational models. My PhD thesis focused on the modulatory impact of social inferences (i.e., Culture) on visual perception (e.g., face perception). One of my current focus is to model the individual visual perception profiles and their efficiencies (i.e., how visual perception can be archieved using various types of strategies).

I am very passionate about Statistics and Scientific Computing. For example, I develop and maintain iMap4 - a Matlab toolbox for eye movement analysis using linear mixed models. I also contributed to various open-source software (e.g., Tensorflow). Currently, I am a member of pymc-devs and a regular contributor to PyMC3. A comprehensive understanding of the tools I use is an essential part of my research, and, in my opinion, the best way to achieve that is to build all tools from scratch.

I interact with my data mostly in Python and Matlab, occasionally in R. You can find more information on the projects I am working on in Github. My academic activities can be found on my Google Scholar profile and my Curriculum Vitae.