Charley Wu | hiring PhDs/Postdocs

Me and @watarutoyokawa.bsky.social want to thank everyone who attended, presented at, and helped organize #COSMOS2025! If you weren't able to make it, all teaching materials are already online and we'll be uploading videos of all talks soon cosmossummerschool.github.io/materials/

A causal framework for the drivers of animal social network structure Author summary Behavioural ecologists ask mechanistic questions about behaviour—causal questions. When studying animal societies, these questions often concern the drivers of social network structure....

Are you studying animal sociality?

My (now published) first PhD chapter proposes a Bayesian + causal framework to infer the factors shaping the social relationships that animals form with one another.

journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

Analysis of communication and collective behavior in animal groups

⭐PhD position available!⭐
Come join us @imprs-qbee.bsky.social to study communication and collective behavior in animal groups! We're looking for someone excited to use computational approaches to tackle biological questions, using our full-group tracking datasets
imprs-qbee.mpg.de/121465/analy...

We're a month further into the job market - how are things looking? The good news is that the market does seem to have been delayed: ~150 new listings have appeared since my last post. The bad news is that the total is still substantially lower than what it was during the covid dip.

Leveling up fun: learning progress, expectations, and success influence enjoyment in video games Scientific Reports - Leveling up fun: learning progress, expectations, and success influence enjoyment in video games

What influences whether people have fun with a task?

Our paper “Leveling up fun: learning progress, expectations and success influence enjoyment in video games” with @thecharleywu.bsky.social and @ericschulz.bsky.social now in Scientific Reports!

rdcu.be/eI069

Paper summary below 1/4

📢🚀 Are you an early-career researcher working on anything related to culture, behaviour or learning? 🧠🌍 Join ESLR, an interdisciplinary research community! We have a NEW website and our membership is now FREE. 👉 Sign up here to get updates and become a member: www.eslrsociety.com/membership

Tutorial 3 of #cosmos2025 given by @thecharleywu.bsky.social, walking through good practices and tips in model fitting and recovering with giving a hands-on tutorial with R. As always all codes available here: cosmossummerschool.github.io/notebooks/tu...

Thanks to @koumurayama.bsky.social for sharing his knowledge of some hidden gems in Tokyo

Mentorship sessions are one of my favorite parts of #COSMOS2025 Discussing science and academic careers, while exploring what Tokyo has to offer! With @liang-lee.bsky.social @mohsen-raoufi.bsky.social @wasita.bsky.social @shannonyasuda.bsky.social @kefang.bsky.social @davidschultner.bsky.social

As our last invited speaker of #COSMOS2025, @lazytenuredprof.bsky.social uses sequential photos of Andrey Markov as an introduction to how MCMC with people can be used to understand (cultural) knowledge

Officially a professor today! Thank you to everyone who has helped me along the way! I certainly wouldn't be here without the support of my fantastic network of friends and peers. Here's to paying it forward in my new home at @tuda.bsky.social

Using social reinforcement learning to figure out which japanese konbini (convenience store) is superior. Where are you getting your strong zero, onigiri, or egg sandwich?
Last #COSMOS2025 talk of the day by Shinsuke Suzuki sites.google.com/view/szklab/...

Afternoon session #COSMOS2025 is about trying to cooperate with lying gossips… 😵 but only in prisoner’s dilemma 😌 by Mayuko Nakamaru (sites.google.com/view/mayukon...)

I just had a lovely morning teaching memo with Lio Wong at #COSMOS2025 in Tokyo! Charley and Wataru have put together an absolutely *fantastic* summer school. Fascinating talks, delightful people… and excellent location. I feel so lucky to be here. If you ever get a chance to attend COSMOS, take it!

A small selection of #COSMOS2025 participants hard at work on their group projects @lazytenuredprof.bsky.social @damienfarine.bsky.social @lucymaplin.bsky.social Thanks to all of the instructors for providing code/data for hands-on experience with modeling cosmossummerschool.github.io/projects/

Now up at #COSMOS2025: @kartikchandra.bsky.social & Lio Wong giving a tutorial on recursive social reasoning using MEMO github.com/kach/memo
Fun fact: those flowers between them and 🗻 are called "cosmos".
Collab notebook here to follow along 👉 cosmossummerschool.github.io/materials/#g...

The first lecture of the day at #COSMOSTokyo is on various social and strategic learning scenarios and their underlying neurocomputational mechanisms, by Lusha Zhu (www.lushazhu.com)

Shifting the spotlight from dominance towards shared decision-making in collective groups @damienfarine.bsky.social #COSMOS2025

@thecharleywu.bsky.social is giving our second tutorial explaining how we can study complex social behaviour through computational models. As always, code and demo are available in the website! cosmossummerschool.github.io/notebooks/tu...

The first lecture of #COSMOSTokyo given by @lucymaplin.bsky.social showing a variety of innovations in birds reported in the citizen science app! www.spotteron.net/apps/regiona...

Up now at #COSMOS2025 @lucymaplin.bsky.social presenting work on social learning and cultural inheritance in wild great tits 🐦

Key dimensions of social learning problems. @watarutoyokawa.bsky.social giving the first tutorial of #COSMOS2025 As always, course materials are opening available on our website cosmossummerschool.github.io/materials/

Tatsuya Kameda giving the opening keynote at #COSMOS2025 (photo care of @henrivdd.bsky.social)

Internal uncertainty impacts social information use in risky choice across adolescence - Communications Psychology Adolescents’ choices are influenced by others. A social risky choice experiment and Bayesian modelling reveal that age differences in internal uncertainty, being unsure how to choose, relate to differences in susceptibility to social influence.

😍 Our latest is out now in @commspsychol.nature.com. 🤩 We show with Bayesian modelling and experimental manipulation of uncertainty that developmental differences in social influence depend on differences in the internal uncertainty people have about their choice
doi.org/10.1038/s442...

We’re looking for a postdoc to join our Max Planck group in Germany some time in 2026. If you have computational and/or neuroimaging expertise, and are interested in questions intersecting perception and cognition, please reach out! I’ll also be happy to chat at the #Bernsteinconference this week.

COSMOS2025 kick started!! And we’ve got the generous support from #ESLR community for the ESLR travel award!! Join ESLR if you are interested in social learning, cultural evolution, collective behaviour, and beyond!!

🚀👩‍🚀 COSMOS 2025 is coming to Tokyo in less than a week! Organized by @thecharleywu.bsky.social &
@watarutoyokawa.bsky.social with an amazing faculty👇 can’t wait to welcome everyone to RIKEN.
📣 Attendees: check your inbox for info
cosmossummerschool.github.io

🚨 I am over the moon 🌓 to announce that I am joining University College Dublin @ucddublin.bsky.social as an Assistant Professor this fall to start the Uncertain Mind (UMI) lab 💫

I am looking for PhD/Postdoc candidates to join (more below 👇 ). Please RT as the deadline is pretty soon 🙏

🚀👩‍🚀 COSMOS 2025 is coming to Tokyo in less than a week! Me + @watarutoyokawa.bsky.social + our amazing faculty👇 can’t wait to welcome everyone to RIKEN.
📣 Attendees: check your inbox for info about travel, accommodations, mentorship groups, guest access, etc...
cosmossummerschool.github.io

How important is language for human-like intelligence? We use language to communicate our thoughts. But is language merely the expression of thoughts, which are themselves produced by other, nonlinguistic parts of our minds? Or does language play a more t...

A writeup to go w/ our CogSci 2025 symposium arxiv.org/abs/2509.15560 (in print hopefully soon). We argue that it is not a coincidence that neural net breakthroughs came from training on natural language, and there are important lessons here for understanding human intelligence.