Wei Ji Ma

Impact Goals Award

New York University

Wei Ji Ma is Professor of Neural Science and Psychology at New York University. Born and raised in the Netherlands, he received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Groningen in 2001. He was Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine from 2008 to 2013 before he joined New York University. His laboratory studies how people make decisions under uncertainty by combining behavioral experiments, computational models, and neural measures. Ma founded the “Growing up in Science” conversation series, in which scientists tell their life stories with an emphasis on doubts, struggles, and failures. He is a founding member of the Scientist Action and Advocacy Network, which provides pro-bono science to social and environmental non-profit organizations. He also co-founded the Rural China Education Foundation, which supports community-based and student-centered teaching in rural China. In 2021, Ma received the 2021 Jeffrey L. Elman Prize for Scientific Achievement and Community Building from the Cognitive Sciences Society.