People

Akram founded the Bakkour Memory and Decision lab in 2020. He received a BS in Neuroscience from Brown University and a PhD in Neuroscience from The University of Texas at Austin. Akram then completed his postdoctoral training at Columbia University before moving to Chicago. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at The University of Chicago.

Hayoung received her B.A. in Neuroscience with a minor in Psychology from Harvard University, where she studied how language can be used as a tool for emotion regulation. She is broadly interested in how emotions influence decision-making and memories, and she hopes to explore this in both clinical and marketing contexts. Outside of the lab, Hayoung loves to be creative through photography and writing, and she is also passionate about education and mental health.

Xinyue is a student in the MA Program in the Social Sciences (MAPSS) at the University of Chicago. As an undergraduate, she went to University of California, San Diego with a double major in Psychology and Communication. She is broadly interested in the cognitive mechanisms of episodic memory and decision-making, and the interactions between them. During her free time, Xinyue enjoys anime, video games, films and travelling.

Defne is an international (Turkish) third year in the College majoring in Math & Psych. She is very interested in the process of decision making and how it interacts with memory, language, and motivation and the neuro-computational processes that govern these interactions. She also works at the Center for Decision Research @ Booth on campus. In her free time, she likes to go to Latin Dance practices, take landscape photos and edit them & learn programming.