Dr. Sabine Pittnauer

I received both my M.A. and my PhD (summa cum laude) in Economics  from the University of Bonn, in the latter case working under the supervision of Nobel laureate, the late Professor Reinhard Selten. From 2006 to 2015 I worked at the University of Bonn in his research centre Rationality in the Light of Experimental Economics. When the research centre closed in 2015 at the end of its 10-year project horizon, I moved to the Technion in Haifa and continued my research there and in Germany. Since February 2023 I have been working as an Assistant Professor (non-tenured) at the Institute for Organization Design at the Vienna University of Economics and Business.

My research focus has been on designing and implementing problem solving and decision making experiments in which human beings can demonstrate proficiency in (1) inducing effective cognitive representations from prior knowledge and experience, and (2) understanding the cognitive representations of others. The results from such experiments suggest that a blend of abductive thinking, scientific reasoning, and knowledgeable imitation produces the capacity to tackle novel complex decision problems.