Main Focus
- Cognitive Psychology
- Multimodal Behavioral Analysis
- Virtual Reality
- Eye-tracking Analysis
- Environmental Criminology
Curriculum Vitae
Shadi Derakhshan is a postdoctoral researcher specializing at the intersection of cognitive science and environmental criminology. She joined the Max Planck Institute in September 2025 in the research department led by Prof. Dr. Dr. van Gelder.
Her research addresses a core challenge in the field: the difficulty of observing and measuring criminological phenomena as they occur. By leveraging Virtual Reality (VR) and multimodal behavioral analysis, including eye-tracking and psychometrics, she develops ecologically valid experimental frameworks to decode human behavior, decision-making, and emotions in real-time. Her work is dedicated to identifying environmental interventions that effectively reduce crime while simultaneously enhancing the public’s subjective sense of safety.
Shadi earned her doctoral degree (2025) in Cognitive Science from the University of Osnabrück. Her doctoral research focused on the development of experimental frameworks for human-computer interaction and the integration of multimodal measures in virtual environments.
She also holds an MSc in Cognitive Science from the University of Osnabrück, as well as Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Psychology from the University of Isfahan, Iran.
