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Marina Dubova
Marina Dubova
I am an Omidyar postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. My research aims to reveal and inform the cognitive mechanisms of discovery. I develop formal (e.g., computational models) and empirical methods (e.g., cognitive experiments with scientists) to put the foundations of scientific method to rigorous tests. I use insights from cognitive science to learn how theories and data can be integrated and lead to better understandings of the world. My dissertation at Indiana University focused on the cognitive mechanisms of discovery (see précis here). In Fall 2026, I will start as an assistant professor at UC Berkeley psychology department (see here for more info).
Here are some questions that I am currently focusing on:
How to best design a scientific experiment? When collecting new data, should we attempt to confirm our theories, falsify them, resolve theoretical disagreements, or sample the data in a way that is not primarily informed by theory? spoiler from my work: against common intuition, more exploratory experimentation might help scientists develop more accurate & useful theories than the theory-informed experiments.
Which theory-building strategies facilitate scientific progress? Should we prefer theories that are simple? spoiler from my work: maybe not! developing theories with a complexity, instead of a simplicity bias might have some unanticipated benefits.
How can we develop better conceptual systems for sciences? What epistemic functions do scientific ontologies play? spoiler from my work: scientific concepts are perspectives that affect all aspects of the scientific work—from data collection, to interpretation and communication. Improving scientific concepts is not possible without taking into account the ways in which these concepts have affected the rest of the scientific process.
Apart from these (already way too broad) issues, I am also studying concept learning in humans and AI, mechanisms of language evolution, and conceptual influences on perception.
I combine behavioral experiments, computational modeling, and theoretical analyses in my research. I work at the intersection of cognitive science, philosophy of science, complex systems, and artificial intelligence.
When I am not learning or studying learning, I like to play music, sing, travel, conduct clay & glazing studies, work on my bird categorization skills, and sail away from and back to the marinas without sinking.
I am always enthusiastic to discuss your/my research and ideas. Please, feel free to contact me :)
email: mdubova@iu.edu
twitter: @dubova_marina
github: blinodelka
OSF: Marina Dubova
I am grateful to be supported by these people: James Holehouse, Ella Liu, Rob Goldstone, Sabina Sloman, Sebastian Musslick, Roman Tikhonov, Jamie Michelson, Will Hayes, Arseny Moskvichev, Polina Greskova, Alexey Filippov, TCTS community + many others
News
News
April 7—8: I participated at the workshop at the Beyond Center at ASU and gave an invited talk about carving nature at its joints carving joints into nature.
February 11th—March 8th: Visiting Poldrack's lab and also giving a FriSeminar talk on "Excess Capacity Learning" at the Stanford Psychology department on February 21st.
February 10th: I gave an invited talk on the "Cognitive Mechanisms of Discovery" at the Mind, Technology, and Society series at UC Merced.
January 27th 2025: our paper reassessing Ockham’s razor in light of new technological and scientific advances has just been published in PNAS. See the SFI news feature covering our article:)
December 19th 2024: I was awarded the Lou Schuyler postdoctoral research grant on the "Cognitive Foundations of Scientific Discovery" project.
December 9th 2024: gave an invited expert talk "Is Ockham's razor losing its edge?" in Modeling in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Osnabrück. In the talk, I was trying to convince the students to explore different kinds of—sometimes very complex—models of the mind.
November 16th 2024: giving a talk on the empirical insights into concept-laden research in neuroscience the Philosophy of Science Association
October 23rd 2024: giving an invited talk at SUNY Binghamton cognitive lunch
July 29—August 3rd 2024: visiting University of Osnabrück and giving a talk on computational exploration of experimentation strategies in science.
July 25th 2024: presenting a poster on how novices and expert neuroscientists explore brain maps at the Cognitive Society 2024!
July 24th 2024: co-organizing a full day CogSci workshop where we will try to improve concepts in Cognitive Science! Please stop by:)
July 3rd 2024: I am giving a talk on cognitive epistemology at the Graduate Workshop in Computational Social Science
May 24th 2024: said good bye to all my favorite people in Bloomington and moved to my new home in Santa Fe, NM
May 14th 2024: I defended my PhD dissertation "Observations and theories: cognitive mechanisms of discovery"!!!
April 2024: I received the Outstanding Dissertation in Cognitive Science award at IU!
March 27th 2024: I am giving a talk "If reality is there would we be able to learn about it?" at the Investigating Reality workshop
November 2023—February 2024: visiting UC Berkeley, NYU, and Yale psychology departments with a talk "Carving nature at its joints: the double-edged sword of theory-driven discovery"
November 7th 2023: I am talking about random experiments at Russ Poldrack's lab
August 16—21st 2023: I am visiting the Autonomous Empirical Research group at Brown University
July 27th 2023: I am (virtually) presenting the "Excess Capacity Learning" paper at CogSci
July 18—21st 2023: I am participating at the MathPsych conference
July 10—15th 2023: I am participating at the workshop on Scientific and Statistical Inference and presenting some ideas on why parsimony principle in model building should be abandoned
June 14th 2023: our paper "Carving joints into nature: reengineering scientific concepts in light of concept-laden evidence" is published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, and is featured in the cover:)
May 9th 2023: I am presenting a poster on computational modeling of experimentation strategies in science and giving a talk on autonomous empirical research at Metascience 2023
May 3rd 2023: I am giving an invited talk "Computational investigation of experimentation strategies in science" at the Computational Social Science Society of Americas webinar. My talk is paired with Abdullah M. Almaatouq's talk on integrative experimental design:)
April 2023: I received the Outstanding Research in Cognitive Science award at IU!
April 2023: I received the Teaching Excellence award at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at IU:)
November 29—December 4: participating at NeurIPS conference and presenting the work on "Generalizing with overly complex representations"
November 17—20: participating at the Psychonomic society meeting and presenting a poster "The role of active perception and naming in sameness comparison"
November 9—12: participating at the Philosophy of Science Association, and giving a talk on the (controversial) work "Against theory-motivated experimentation in sciences"
Summer 2022: I am supported by the CNS-NRT summer fellowship
May 2022 — ...: I am co-organizing the Augmented Intelligence Workshop
April 29, 2022: I gave a talk "Against theory-motivated experimentation" at the Pittsburgh Formal Epistemology Workshop
January 21, 2022: our (with R. Goldstone) work showing unequal influences of categories on the color perception of simultaneously present objects is published in Cognition
January 18 - May 6, 2022: I am visiting the Center for Formal Epistemology and Department of Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University!
December 30, 2021: my (solo-author!) review paper on building human-like communicative AI is published in Cognitive Systems Research
December 28, 2021: I am awarded with IU Cognitive Science supplemental fellowship
September 13, 2021: I successfully defended my PhD qualification papers:)
August 22, 2021: I submitted two PhD qualification papers to IU cognitive science program! The papers are on 1) making progress in cognitive science and 2) grounded language learning in AI.
July 26—29, 2021: I am presenting a poster "Categories affect color perception of only some simultaneously present objects" at the Cognitive Science Society conference.
July 21, 2021: I am giving an invited talk "Growing opportunities to grow: towards a model of open-ended communication learning" at the Social Learning and Cultural Evolution workshop
July 18—July 23, 2021: I am participating at my favorite ALIFE conference, where I am presenting some preliminary results on modeling open-ended communication learning in groups!
June 14—July 2, 2021: I am participating at the SFI Complexity Interactive summer school! Our group project is called "Mapping Complexity: An Epistemological Look at Methods of Study & Discovery"
June 1—August 23, 2021: I am supported by the CNS-NRT summer fellowship
May 21, 2021: my very first journal paper "The Influences of Category Learning on Perceptual Reconstructions" got published in the Cognitive Science journal!
April 6, 2021: I am participating at the Mechanisms of Learning Forum at Emory University as an affiliate of the Building a Mind Lab
March 26, 2021: I gave an invited talk "Categorical Perception Meets El Greco" at the HSE Cognitive Research Lab Meeting
Sept 17—Sept 25, 2020: I am presenting our work "The Influences of Category Learning on Perceptual Reconstructions" at the 61st Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society: check out our poster here!
Sept 17—Sept 25, 2020: Presenting our work "Reinforcement Communication Learning in Different Social Network Structures" at NetSci!
July 29—Aug 1, 2020: Participating at CogSci annual conference!
July 18, 2020: Presenting our work "Reinforcement Communication Learning in Different Social Network Structures" at ICML Language and Reinforcement Learning workshop!
July 16, 2020: I'm presenting the work "Effects of Supervision, Population Size, and Self-Play on Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning to Communicate" at ALIFE conference (feel free to join the discussion!)
July 13—July 18, 2020: I am participating at ALIFE and ICML conferences!
June 22—July 3, 2020: I will attend SINSA2020 (won fee remission by IUNI-SINSA Scholars program)
June 14—July 10, 2020: I will attend the Complex Systems Summer School at Santa Fe Institute (whoa!)
March 12—.... 2020: I am isolating at home, drinking tea, and working *very productively*
March 1—March 3, 2020: I gave a talk on the mechanisms of categorical perception at Emory University, Georgia (Mechanisms of Learning Forum)
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