Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

LightNews

Lucy Lai

@lucylai.bsky.social

390 followers 280 following 34 posts

👩🏻‍🏫 asst teaching prof @ uc san diego 🧠 cognitive scientist

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Lucy Lai @lucylai.bsky.social · Jun 25

📢🚨I’m elated to share that I’ll be starting as a tenure-track 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗿 👩🏻‍🏫 in the Department of Cognitive Science at UC San Diego this July! ☀️ @ucsandiego.bsky.social 1/

#ucsd #newprofessor #womeninSTEM

Lucy Lai @lucylai.bsky.social · Jul 25

6/ Check out the full paper in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social!
📄 authors.elsevier.com/a/1lMMD2Hx2-...
🧠 With @gershbrain.bsky.social and @annhuang42.bsky.social
This study took almost 4 years of on-and-off work! The lesson learned here was to persevere on your ideas, even when you hit roadblocks! 🤩

authors.elsevier.com

Lucy Lai @lucylai.bsky.social · Jul 25

5/ ✅ When memory is scarce, people chunk even more—they reduce their response time more when they have to remember more items (Ns=6).
💡𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆: chunking is an efficient and adaptive strategy to conserve cognitive resources.

Lucy Lai @lucylai.bsky.social · Jul 25

4/ ✅ Our model also predicts (and our data confirm) that chunking in structured environments 𝗿𝗲𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗰𝘆 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘁𝘆 (the memory demands of the policy) while 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱.

Lucy Lai @lucylai.bsky.social · Jul 25

3/ We tested the predictions of our model in behavioral experiments and found that:
✅ People chunk by leveraging temporal structure in the environment, making action selection 𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙨 𝙢𝙚𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙮-𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙫𝙚, 𝙛𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙚 𝙖𝙘𝙘𝙪𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙚!

Lucy Lai @lucylai.bsky.social · Jul 25

2/ We proposed that people learn and utilize action chunks because they are easier to store in memory. We formalized this idea in a model of 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙙𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙥𝙤𝙡𝙞𝙘𝙮 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣:

Lucy Lai @lucylai.bsky.social · Jul 25

🚨📊ɴᴇᴡ ᴘᴀᴘᴇʀ!! When we learn a new skill—like tying shoelaces or making pasta—we often start with a series of deliberate steps. But eventually, those steps blend into a smooth, single unit: an action chunk. But why and when do we chunk? 👇
📰https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1lMMD2Hx2-9B8

Lucy Lai @lucylai.bsky.social · Jun 27

I decided at age 5 that I wanted to be a teacher, and at 15 that I wanted to become a professor, so it feels surreal that this childhood dream is now a reality 🥹

I wrote a short reflection about how I got here, would love if you gave it a read! 📖: sabbatical.lucylai.com/p/becoming-p...

becoming professor lai

fulfilling my childhood dreams

sabbatical.lucylai.com

Lucy Lai @lucylai.bsky.social · Jun 25

Finally, if you are interested in teaching-focused faculty positions, please reach out to me anytime. I’ll also be sharing a guide on how to apply for such faculty positions very soon, so stay tuned! 🔔 #gotritons 6/6

Lucy Lai @lucylai.bsky.social · Jun 25

These past two years in Japan 🇯🇵 have been so much more than I could have asked for. Thank you @oistedu.bsky.social for all the beautiful friendships made and for hosting me as a visiting scholar (when I wasn’t off exploring Asia 🌏✈️) 5/

Lucy Lai @lucylai.bsky.social · Jun 25

I want to thank my mentors @gershbrain.bsky.social, @neurovenki.bsky.social, and @taralyntan.bsky.social for believing in my potential as a scientist and educator. And special shoutouts to @analog-ashley.bsky.social and Shannon Ellis for introducing me to teaching-focused faculty positions! 4/

Lucy Lai @lucylai.bsky.social · Jun 25

Outside the classroom, my research will explore questions about 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗳 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲, 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻-𝗔𝗜 𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗮𝗯𝗼𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 🤖🧠 3/

Lucy Lai @lucylai.bsky.social · Jun 25

After a wonderful sabbatical year, I’m so excited to begin my career at UCSD doing what I love most: teaching students and making discoveries about human behavior and cognition 🧠 2/

Lucy Lai @lucylai.bsky.social · Jun 25

📢🚨I’m elated to share that I’ll be starting as a tenure-track 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗿 👩🏻‍🏫 in the Department of Cognitive Science at UC San Diego this July! ☀️ @ucsandiego.bsky.social 1/

#ucsd #newprofessor #womeninSTEM

Lucy Lai @lucylai.bsky.social · Apr 30

ok so i know that journals will probably never pay reviewers but can't they at least introduce some incentive structure where you get publication costs waived for every 3 reviews you do or something? maybe not feasible if everyone wants to submit to CNS but you can centralize the incentive system 🤔

Lucy Lai @lucylai.bsky.social · Apr 14

great new work by @liushuze.bsky.social looking at how time and memory costs interact in policy compression :)

Liu, Shuze @liushuze.bsky.social · Apr 12

@lucylai.bsky.social, @gershbrain.bsky.social, Bilal Bari, and I have a new paper out in JEP:G!

We study the time and memory costs of policy compression—a resource-rational framework for decision making, focusing on how state-dependent our policies ought to be.

psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

psycnet.apa.org

Lucy Lai @lucylai.bsky.social · Mar 3

🚨📢 so excited to be hosting this Global Summit on Open Problems in AI this April in Tokyo! 🇯🇵 we have an exciting line up of speakers from academia and industry. please share broadly! www.algopreneurship.ai
#AI #research #entrepreneurship #conference #japan #summit

Algorithmic Innovation & Entrepreneurship

www.algopreneurship.ai

Reposted by Lucy Lai

Reed Orchinik @rorchinik.bsky.social · Feb 1

New WP!
The illusory truth effect (repetition -> belief) is core to psych of beliefs, & thought to be a deep bias impacting misinfo, persuasion & advertising

Why would cognition include such a flaw? We argue it is a rational adaptation to high-quality info environments 🧵1/

Lucy Lai @lucylai.bsky.social · Dec 6

this is the travel grant that changed my life and career!!! i applied as a sophomore in college and it’s what introduced me to the field of computational neuroscience 😍 i highly recommend you share with your undergrads / apply yourself if you are one! happy to answer any questions about it

cosynemeeting.bsky.social @cosynemeeting.bsky.social · Dec 2

The Undergrad Travel Grant Program (deadline: Dec 6th) provides an opportunity for undergrads to learn more about comp systems neuro. It’s especially suited for students considering neuro graduate study!

Apply here:
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

More info:
www.cosyne.org/travel-grants

Cosyne 2025 Undergraduate Travel Grant Program

docs.google.com

Lucy Lai @lucylai.bsky.social · Dec 4

congrats @bdanubius.bsky.social !!! well deserved 🥹🥳

Dániel Barabási @bdanubius.bsky.social · Dec 3

Massively humbled to be on the 2025 Forbes Science 30 under 30 List

Huge thanks to my mentors, family, friends and collaborators — I would not be here with you all.

Now here's to living up to his honor in my next 30 years!

#ForbesUnder30

Lucy Lai @lucylai.bsky.social · Nov 18

soooo r ppl here?

Reposted by Lucy Lai

Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · Jan 12

This is really cool work!

Fred Callaway @fredcallaway.bsky.social · Jan 11

Happy to belatedly "announce" that our paper on nudging has been published in Psych Review! We understand nudges as changing the "meta-level decision-making problem", influencing people's choices by influencing what they think about it.

psycnet.apa.org/record/2024-...

Optimal Nudging for Cognitively Bounded Agents: A Framework for Modeling, Predicting, and Controlling the Effects of Choice Architectures

Lucy Lai @lucylai.bsky.social · Jan 11

apply to the FREE Okinawa Computational Neuroscience Summer School where you can hang out with cool people (incl. me!) at the beach 🏖️☀️ while learning computational neuroscience through lectures, tutorials, and independent projects!!! Deadline: Jan 31 groups.oist.jp/ocnc

Reposted by Lucy Lai

Uma Karmarkar @umakarma.bsky.social · Dec 18

Very cool article on the neuro of number perception (h/t @earlkmiller.bsky.social )

www.quantamagazine.org/why-the-huma...

Why the Human Brain Perceives Small Numbers Better | Quanta Magazine

The discovery that the brain has different systems for representing small and large numbers provokes new questions about memory, attention and mathematics.

www.quantamagazine.org

Reposted by Lucy Lai

Venki Murthy @neurovenki.bsky.social · Dec 5

Excited to see this work out! Work on automatic shaping of animal behavior (and artificial agents), led by the amazing @gautamreddy.bsky.social #neuroscience #psychscisky 🧪

Adaptive algorithms for shaping behavior

bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution

www.biorxiv.org

Lucy Lai @lucylai.bsky.social · Nov 29

should I cite chatGPT if it truly helped me start and finish my most recent project in three months? 🤔

Lucy Lai @lucylai.bsky.social · Aug 8

entering a glorious era of my phd where chatGPT writes my code for me