ESP Biography



UMA KARMARKAR, Neuroscientist doing a marketing PhD at Stanford



Major: GSB / Psych dept

College/Employer: Stanford University

Year of Graduation: G

Picture of Uma Karmarkar

Brief Biographical Sketch:

As an undergrad at Stanford, I started to study how we learn and bring together information about the world around us. That led me to a PhD in neuroscience at UCLA, where I did research on learning, memory and the way that time is stored in the brain. I continued this work at Berkeley for two more years with a project that compared how learning is different in older compared to younger brains. But I started getting really interested in the science behind how people make every day choices, so I came back to Stanford to do a second PhD in the business school. Now I call myself a decision neuroscientist. I study the psychology and neuroscience that determines how people think about their choices and how memory affects decisions.



Past Classes

  (Clicking a class title will bring you to the course's section of the corresponding course catalog)

S774: The Psychology of Your Friends' Influence on You in Splash! Spring 2010 (Apr. 17 - 18, 2010)
If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it too? Are you sure about that? It turns out that the ways we think and the choices we make are shaped by the people around us. Find out more about how this happens in this class about social influence. Drawing on social psychology and neuroscience, we'll use videos and demonstrations to talk about the good, the bad and the ugly ways that we are influenced by other people. We'll even discuss how social pressure can change the world.