Krishn Bera

Cognitive Science PhD Student, Brown University

About


I am a fourth-year Ph.D. student in Cognitive Sciences at Brown University at the Neural Computation and Cognition Lab, advised by Prof. Michael Frank. My general research interests lie in investigating computational principles of intelligence in brains and machines. 

More specifically, I am interested in understanding how neuro-cognitive processes in the brain result in flexible and adaptive learning behaviours. Towards this goal, I am interested in investigating what computational mechanisms enable learning of the stable properties of the environment while enabling flexible, generalizable behaviours to deal with non-stationarities in the environment. Relatedly, I am also keen on exploring how this relates to other neuro-cognitive aspects such as memory, reinforcement learning and cognitive control. Concurrently, my other work involves developing efficient and tractable Bayesian inference methods for computational models that jointly account for the processes underlying human decision-making and learning. 
Previously, I graduated from IIIT-Hyderabad with B.Tech. in Computer Science and M.S. (research) in Computing and Human Sciences. At IIIT, I was working at Cognitive Science Lab under the supervision of Prof. Bapi Raju. My work (thesis) involved empirical and computational investigation of motor skill learning in internally-guided sequencing.


News

Jul 19, 2025

I'll be attending MathPsych 2025 where I'm co-organizing a workshop and a symposium on simulation-based inference for cognitive modeling. I'll be presenting our latest work ib efficient Bayesian inference for RLSSM models!

Read more


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Check out our latest work on HSSM!

HSSM (Hierarchical Sequential Sampling Modeling) is a modern Python toolbox that provides state-of-the-art Bayesian inference (parameter fitting) methods for cognitive modeling. 

Key features include
  • Flexible, hierarchical model building backbone for complex mixed-effects models including estimation of trial-by-trial neural covariates
  • Ready-to-use likelihood approximators for non-analytical and previously intractable cognitive process models
  • User-friendly, extensible and modular framework for cognitive modeling
  • Support for generic Bayesian inference workflow
and much more! 

Publications

Fast and robust Bayesian inference for modular combinations of dynamic learning and decision models


Krishn Bera, Alexander Fengler, Michael J. Frank

47th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci, 2025


Beyond Drift Diffusion Models: Fitting a Broad Class of Decision and Reinforcement Learning Models with HDDM


Alexander Fengler, Krishn Bera, Mads L. Pedersen, Michael J. Frank

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, vol. 34(10), 2022 Sep, pp. 1780-1805



Contact


Krishn Bera

PhD student, Cognitive Science



Dept. of Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences

Brown University

Metcalf Research Building
190 Thayer St
Providence, RI (US) 02912


Curriculum vitae