Team

Christina Sartzetaki

I am a PhD candidate at the Video & Image Sense Lab in the Informatics Institute of the University of Amsterdam, supervised by Iris Groen and Cees Snoek, and funded by the European AI Laboratory ELLIS. I hold an Integrated Masters degree (BSc & MSc) in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens. 

My research focuses on the representational alignment between deep video-AI and the human brain and behaviour. Through assessing the extent of alignment in current state-of-the-art models and researching methods to explicitly increase alignment, I aim to work towards the goal of enhancing the models’ robustness and generalisability.

Clemens Bartnik

I am currently a Ph.D. student advised by Iris Groen and Cees Snoek at the Video & Image Sense Lab in the Institute for Informatics at the University of Amsterdam. 

My research interest involves leveraging computational modeling and neuroimaging techniques to understand representations of navigational affordances in the human visual system and computational models. I am inspired by the idea to combine the sucesses of state-of-the-art computer vision algorithms with classical approaches of measuring human behavior and neuroimaging to better understand how we perceive the world around us.

Amber Brands

I am a PhD student in the Visual and Image Sense Lab at the University of Amsterdam since October 2020. I have completed a Bachelor in Psychobiology (2012-2015) and a Master in Brain and Cognitive Sciences (2016-2019), both at the University of Amsterdam. 

My PhD project focuses on the exploration of temporal dynamics in the human visual system, during natural image perception. By collecting neuroimaging data, and combining these with computational models, I hope to gain more insight in how visual input is processed and which mechanisms underlie visual encoding across a variety of brain areas.

Niklas Müller

I am a Ph.D. student at the Brain and Cognition group at the University of Amsterdam funded by the Data Science Centre. My supervisors are Iris Groen and Steven Scholte. I hold a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the University of Göttingen as well as a Master's Degree in Artificial Intelligence from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

My research will focus on investigating the effect of using inductive biases to improve natural image processing from the perspective of object classification, information processing, as well as understanding neural data obtained by neuroimaging techniques.

Former members

Giacomo Aldegheri

I am a postdoc at the Brain and Cognition group at the University of Amsterdam, working with Steven Scholte and Iris Groen. Before that, I did my PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at the Donders Institute in Nijmegen. 

My research focuses on investigating how the brain can visually parse complex everyday scenes. I plan to do so by comparing human neuroimaging data with computational models that explicitly represent relations between objects.

Nikolina Vuksic

I am a second-year Research Master Psychology student, specializing in Clinical Psychology and Brain and Cognition.

Currently, I am assisting the PhD students with fMRI and EEG data collection.


In my future work, I hope to use neuroimaging techniques to investigate the impact of music perception and performance on physical and mental health.


Rosie Zheng

I studied Psychology and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Amsterdam. I am currently a Research Assistant with Iris Groen investigating the representation of scene affordances in deep neural networks.