cognitive AI in vision
Despite notable advances in AI over the last decade, human intelligence still surpasses AI in most daily tasks. Our lab aims to
translate insights from cognitive science and neuroscience to push the frontiers of AI research.
use AI models to further our understanding of human cognition.
RESEARCH
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We design and conduct psychophysics experiments that benchmark human and AI performance in vision tasks, identify research gaps, and bootstrap modern AI.
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We also develop novel computational models that help evaluate working hypotheses in human vision, and thereby, advance our understanding of biological perception.
LAB CULTURE
All of us in DeepNeuroCognition Lab seek to foster a welcoming, respectful and caring lab environment, where we support a diverse group of students and trainees of all levels regardless of their race, age, colour , national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, economic status and other characteristics and identities.
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We value scientific integrity, teamwork, responsiblity, passion, self-motivation, open-mindedness, differences, and adapatability. If you are interested in joining our lab, we expect you to uphold to them.
DR. MENGMI ZHANG
[Nov, 2023 - present] Tenure-track Nanyang assistant professor, College of Computing and Data Science, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore
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[Sep, 2021 - Apr, 2025] Principal scientist and principal investigator @CFAR and I2R, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore
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[Jul 1, 2022 - Dec 28, 2022] Adjunct Asst Prof @Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept, National University of Singapore
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[Jun, 2019 - Sep, 2021] Post-doc, Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School
(also affiliated with MIT-Harvard Center for Brains, Minds and Machines, USA)
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[Aug, 2015 - Jan, 2019] Ph.D., National University of Singapore
(exchange at KreimanLab @ Harvard Medical School, USA)
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[Aug, 2011 - Jul, 2015] B.Eng, National University of Singapore
(exchange at University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
NEWS (the latest 3 months only)
[Jan, 2026] Our paper on active view selection is accepted at ICLR 2026!
[Jan, 2026] Our paper on unsupervised prior learning is accepted at ICLR 2026!
[Dec, 2025] I continue to serve as Area Chairs for ICLR, ICML, and NeurIPS!
[Nov, 2025] I gave talks at Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) and University of Washington, Seattle!
[Oct, 2025] I am serving as an editor for International Journal of Computer Vision (IJCV) - Special Issue on Human-Inspired Computer Vision!
[Sep, 2025] Congrats to Qing Lin! Her ICCV work on augmenting emotions with GenAI is awarded the Best Poster Award at the NTU Researchers' Day in Singapore!
[Sep, 2025] Congrats to Yong Jian Ng! His FYP project, co-supervised by our postdoc Dr. Qing Lin and me is awarded the Global Winner Award at the prestigious Global Undergraduate Awards program!
[Sep, 2025] Our paper on Uncovering Modality Bias and Conflict of AI models in Sound Localization is accepted as spotlight in NeurIPS 2025 (3% acceptance rate)!
[Jun, 2025] Our paper on using AI to augment human emotions is accepted in ICCV 2025!
[May, 2025] Our paper on using AI to predict errors of another AI is accepted in ICML 2025!
MANY THANKS
Our students, postdocs, research engineers and research scientists are the lifeblood of the lab! Thank you for your hard work and dedication to research!