Neil Robert Bramley
Home Address
1 C Downhills Park Road
Haringey
London, N17 6PE
+44 79 1441 9386
Education
Work Address
2.01, 26 Bedford Way
University College London
London, WC1H 0AP
neil.bramley@ucl.ac.uk
Degrees
PhD, Experimental Psychology, University College London, England,
Expected completion: 2017
Thesis title: Active causal learning
Supervisors: Dr David Lagnado & Prof Peter Dayan
MRes, Computer Science, University College London, England, 2013
Project title: Active Learning Algorithms in Cognition and in Practice
Supervisors: Dr David Lagnado & Prof Peter Dayan
Project grade: Distinction (84/100)
Overall grade: Merit (80/100)
MSc, Cognitive and Decision Sciences, University College London, England, 2011
Project title: Mechanisms of Active Causal Learning
Supervisor: Dr David Lagnado
Project grade: Distinction (90/100)
Overall grade: Distinction & class prize (86/100)
MA (Hons), Philosophy, University of Glasgow, Scotland, 2009
Dissertation title: Does physicalism entail experientialism? (Philosophy of Mind)
Supervisor: Dr David Bain
Dissertation grade: A (19/22)
Overall grade: 2:1 (17/22)
School
Advanced Highers (Scottish A2 level), Boroughmuir High School, Scotland, 2004
Grades: English (A), Physics (A), Pure Maths (B)
Highers (Scottish A level), Boroughmuir High School, Scotland, 2003
Grades: Maths (A), Physics (A), Modern Studies (A), English (B), Art & Design (B)
Academic &
Research
Experience
MSc Teaching Support
Oct 2012 to present
Experimental psychology, University College London
• Giving 2-3 lectures per year as part of MSc Cognitive & Decision Sciences
• Topics: philosophy of mind, Integrated information theory, active Learning,
causal learning
Seminar Series Organiser
Oct 2012 to present
London Judgment and Decision Making Seminar Series, University College London
• Inviting and hosting 30 speakers per year at UCL
Statistics and Programming Demonstratorship
Oct 2011 to Jul 2014
Cognitive Perceptual & Brain Sciences Division, School of Psychology & Life Sciences,
UCL, University of London, England
• Providing teaching assistance, tutorial and in class support for 4 MSc programmes
and 1st year PhD students for core Statistics and MATLAB courses
• Leading statistics tutorial sessions
Research Assistantship
Oct 2011 to Jul 2012
Biological and Experimental Psychology Group, School of Biological and Chemical
Sciences, Queen Mary, University of London, England
• Designing and programming pilot experiments for EPSRC funded research on
‘Cognitive causal models of dynamic control for improved decision making’
• Specifically investigating psychology of dynamic causal learning about household
energy consumption
• Securing endorsements from major UK energy regulators and suppliers
Private Tuition
Oct 2011 to Jul 2012
• Giving private statistics tuition at MSc level for cognitive science students
Research Internship
Aug to Sep 2011
Centre for Adaptive Behaviour and Cognition, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
• Developing, designing and programming experiments on embodiment and causal
inference, under the supervision of Dr Hansjörg Neth
Laboratory Assistantship
Feb to Jun 2011
Psychology Department, Brunel University, London, England
• Running of behavioural experiments using real-world eye tracking technology
• Coding eye tracking data
• Involvement in expansion and development of the visual cognition lab
Part-time Research Assistantship
Jun 2005 to Oct 2007
School of the Built Environment, Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland
• Compiling case study reports
• SPSS and data entry
• Photographing case study areas
• Contacting businesses, organising nationwide survey distribution
Publications
Bramley, N. R., Dayan, P., Griffiths, T. L. & Lagnado, D. L. (submitted). Formalizing
Neurath’s ship - Approximate algorithms for online causal learning.
Bramley, N. R., Gerstenberg, T. & Tenenbaum, J. B. (accepted). Natural Science Active learning in dynamic physical microworlds. In Proceedings of the 38th Annual
Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
McCormack, T., Bramley, N., Frosch, C., Patrick, F. & Lagnado, D. (2016). Children’s
causal structure learning. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 141, 1-22.
Bramley, N. R., Dayan, P. & Lagnado, D. A. (2015). Staying afloat on Neurath’s boat Heuristics for sequential causal learning. In Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference
of the Cognitive Science Society, (pp. 262-267). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
Bramley, N., Lagnado, D. & Speekenbrink, M. (2015). Conservative forgetful scholars
- How people learn causal structure through interventions. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition, Vol 41(3), 708-731.
Bramley, N. R., Gerstenberg, T. & Lagnado, D. A (2014). The order of things - Inferring causal structure from temporal patterns. In P. Bello, M. Guarini, M. McShane,
& B. Scassellati (Eds.), Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference of the Cognitive
Science Society (pp. 236-242). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
Posters
Bramley, N. R., Nelson, J. D., Speekenbrink, M. Crupi, V., Lagnado, D. A. (2014).
What should an active causal learner value? Poster presented at The Psychonomic
Society Annual Meeting 2014, Long Beach, California, USA.
Bramley, N. R., Lagnado, D. A. & Speekenbrink, M. (2013). Mechanisms of Active
Causal Learning. Poster presented at the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive
Science Society, Berlin, Germany.
Invited talks
Summerfield lab, Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, UK
London Judgment and Decision Making Group, UCL, London, UK
Conference &
Workshop
Presentations
Awards and
Scholarships
March 2016
October 2015
Decision Making Symposium, Birkbeck UoL, London, UK
July 2015
Computational Cognitive Science Lab, UC Berkeley, CA, USA
Mar 2015
Centre for Logic, Language and Cognition, University of Turin, Italy
Feb 2015
Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
May 2014
CogSci2016, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Aug 2016
ICT16, Providence, RI, USA
Aug 2016
CogSci2015, Pasadena, CA, USA
Aug 2015
CogSci2014, Quebec City, Canada
Aug 2014
Decision making Bristol 2014, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
Jul 2013
SPUDM24, ISCE, Barcelona, Spain
Jul 2013
MathPsych, Potsdam, Germany
Jul 2013
TeaP (Conference on Experimental Psychology), Mannheim, Germany
Mar 2012
Causality Workshop, Causal Cognition Group, UCL, London, UK
Feb 2012
Causality Workshop, Causal Cognition Group, UCL, London, UK
Aug 2011
Causality in the Sciences Workshop, Paris, France
Jun 2011
English Graduate Conference on Lies and Deception, UCL, London, UK
Mar 2011
Robert J. Glushko and Pamela Samuelson Foundation Award for top 20 student papers
at CogSci (2015)
$500
SLMS Graduate School Conference Fund award for funding trip to CogSci (2015) £1470
Bogue Research Fellowship from University College London funding 3 month visit to
UC Berkeley and NYU in the USA (2015)
£3000
London Centre for Financial Computing and Analytics 4-year EPSRC PhD scholarship
(2012 – 2016)
£79,600
Award for best performing student in MSc Cognitive Decision Sciences (2011)
£150
Software
Competencies
ActionScript, CSS, Cogent, Flash, Flex, HTML5, Java, Javascript, LaTeX, Mathematica, MATLAB, MS Office, PHP, Psiturk, Python, R, SPSS, WinBUGS
Languages
English (native), Spanish (intermediate), German & French (basic)
Interests
Philosophy, literature, music, travel
References
Dr David Lagnado
Experimental Psychology
University College London
Room 203, 26 Bedford Way
London WC1H 0AP
England
+44 20 7679 5389
d.lagnado@ucl.ac.uk
Prof Peter Dayan
Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Institute
University College London
Room 241, 25 Howland Street
London W1T 4JG
England
+44 20 3108 8101
dayan@gatsby.ucl.ac.uk