About Me
Research Interests
I am first year Cognitive Science Ph.D. Student, supervised by Prof. Jacob Feldman. Together we will be studying the nature of perception by running categorization experiments. These experiments are focused on how feature learning influences categorization, and what is the relationship between mutual information and categorization? In addition to focusing on the human-side of learning, I will be applying this work to the field robotics. Indeed, this work does not only apply to humans, and the first two years of my Ph.D. will be focusing on how human feature learning can be applied to the field of Robotics, as it is a key component to giving Robots "human-like" vision. More details about my research can be found in my "Research" section.
Personal Interests
Aside from research, my passions lay in exercise, reading, music exploration, and podcasting. I lift weights no less than six-times a week, run at least once a week, and if I can, practice Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Fitness is a central part of routine, and I find it a necessary component of my lifestyle. As for my reading habits, I try to read at least 1 scientific paper a day and read parts of book chapters before bed. I did not dedicate much time to reading until my later teenage years and so I spend more time reading to make-up for this (perceived) deficit. As for my passion for music, it is virtually endless, and I love to expand my knowledge of genres & subgenres in addition to seeing live music as much as possible! Lastly, I run my own academic podcast where I interview experts (mostly professors right now) in various fields. Not only do I love preparing for the covnersations I record, but I do love the artistic component behind video-editing and creating my own digital presence. I go into more detail about the motivations behind why I created the podcast in my "Podcast" section.
Getting in touch
I am currently living in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and you can email me at robert.contofalsky@rutgers.edu. Should you opt-in for an in-person meet up you can find me at the Rutgers Psychology Building where my office is located at room A134!
Mission Statement
The R-Academy podcast provides a platform for the democratization of information about highly localized and niche topics. Its host, Robert Contofalsky, firmly believes in the importance of “Open-Access” like platforms where conversations about science do not have barriers or paywalls behind them. The future of our society depends on the information that we are given at the time, and he believes that this podcast would be a contribution to this overall goal. Access to information is a net positive on human outcome1, and I would love nothing more than to contribute to this trend.
The topics discussed on this podcast are varied and diverse; they range from the broad topics of psychology & motivation, morality, cognitive science, pain physiology, and even include conversations about particle physics! Listed below are a few sample conversations:
You can tune into R-Academy on your preferred platform! It is a available on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts.
This podcast will concentrate on academic affairs for the time being, with the hope of expanding outwards into more niche domains of scholarly topics (e.g., speaking with professional athletes, lawyers, historians, etc). The potential for topics on this podcast will be near infinite as professors/experts are never done talking about their work, and that is the beauty of this podcast: is that it will allow the listeners to understand the work of top-shelf experts in a digestible format, and give them the opportunity to continue their curiosities in the topics that are discussed on this podcast.
In sum, the purpose of this podcast is for the host to act like a tourist in the minds and workspace of his guests; it is a zone that is free of judgment, and its primary focus is inquiry.
Upcoming Episodes
In this section you can see which episodes I am currently editing. I will update this page regularly so that you can see upcoming episodes and keep track of who will be appearing on the podcast.
- Particle Physics & Neutrinos: Dr. Soud Al-Kharusi - Currently Editing & Reviewing
- A Math Model of Prejudice: Dr. Eric Hehman - Recorded Feb 2024
If you would like to appear on R-Academy, please fill out the form below with your name, email, and a brief message about who you are, and your reason for appearing on the show. Please note that Robert will personally select who he would like to appear on his show, and is not going to grant all applicants time on his show if he feels that they would not be in line with his podcast's vision.
GUEST FORM
Citation
Research
Graduate Research
Currently, I am working on replicating a 2021 study on Mutual Information and Categorical Perception, where it was discovered that "the magnitude of improvement in perceptual discrimination of each feature is proportional to the mutual information between the feature and the category variable". In this study, we are investigating how perceptual discrimination of shapes improves after learning, with improvements being proportional to the mutual information between the shapes’ features and their categorical relevance, as defined by their position in a novel 2D feature space. Once (hopefully) replicated, we will expand the scope of the study (TBD). Once the study is available online, it can be found in this section!
As mentioned in my "About Me" section, this is connected to my robotics research as well. A significant portion of robotics research is dedicated to programming vision to these machines, and feature detection is a key component to making their vision functional and similar to ours. For instance, in a 2019 study on monocular camera-based fruit counting and mapping, demonstrated that by using semantic data association, a robot was able to achieve highly accurate fruit detection and counting, showcasing that feature association methods significantly improved mapping precision. As such, the work I do with Prof. Feldman has broader applications beyond understanding human feature learning but also improves robot-feature learning as both rely on detecting, categorizing, and associating features with relevant data to improve perception and decision-making in novel environments.
Undergraduate Research
Throughout my undergraduate degree, I have volunteered in various labs and have written three thesis papers across a broad range of topics in psychological research. All three of my papers received the grade of A, with my first thesis being published in the McGill Journal of Human Behaviour in 2021!
(I created a dedicated "Writing Sample" Section where I go into more detail about my research theses, as well as selected essays from my undergraduate degree. You can read all my papers in this section should you desire to do so!)
I can say with confidence that I thoroughly enjoyed my time in all the labs I worked in. Within two years, I worked in the McGill Human Motivation Lab, McGill University Health Centre, Communication and Consciousness Lab and the MOGILab. Each of these labs granted me invaluable opportunities to satisfy my curiosity for intellectual pursuits in research, as well as expand my expertise within the domains of human behaviour, cognitive science, and neuroscience. Furthermore, each principal investigator carried a unique perspective on how to conduct and interpret research that I carry with me to this day and ultimately aim to implement in the near future as I advance my career. As cliché as it may sound, without them I would not be where I am today, pursuing a career in research.
Writing Samples
In this section I will go through the three undergraduate theses I wrote, as well as include a selected essay of mine. If you have any questions about the samples that I have provided, please do not hesitate in reaching out about any questions you may have, I would be delighted to answer them!
Undergrduate Research Papers
For my first thesis, I investigated the psychological effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on university students from a Self-Determination Theory perspective, under the supervision of Dr. Richard Koestner. For our study, we used a 6-wave longitudinal design (n = 379) to examine how needs satisfaction and depressive symptoms manifested throughout the academic year. Our results demonstrated that the initial Covid Lockdowns placed incredible amounts of stress on students, which stymied their psychological needs from being satisfied by a significant margin. Consequently, this also exacerbated any depressive symptoms that were present within our sample, and we found that there was a strong association between the degree that their psychological needs were thwarted and their rise in depressive symptoms. Ultimately, this thesis would be my first publication and the link to it is found here.
Not long after I wrote my first scientific paper, I joined Dr. Stevan Harnad’s lab and wrote a cognitive science paper about a pilot project to examine how/if humans can learn auditory categories through supervised learning. Excitingly enough, our preliminary results were statistically significant and we demonstrated that our categories are learnable from our sample of 35 participants.
In my senior year, I worked on a very technical neurochemical project with Dr. Aleksandrina Skvortsova while under the supervision of Dr. Jeffrey Mogil. Throughout the academic year, we investigated the nocebo hyperalgesia effect and its underlying neurochemistry. The results will remain confidential until they are finally published
Selected Essays
When it comes to my personal writing samples that I would like to share my final paper in undergrad.
For my last undergrad paper, it is a very different topic compared to my psychology based research papers, as it was written for my history minor. To keep things brief (as this essay is very complicated), this was my final essay for the seminar class "European Intellectual History”, where I investigated how medieval translators carried and maintained significant medieval history, culture, politics, science, and medical knowledge. For my topic, I chose to write about the Slavic disciples, Cyril and Methodius, and the linguistic, theological, and political journey they embarked on when creating a writing system for the Slavs.