Ouroz Khan

Ouroz Khan is an Assistant Professor for the Psychology and Behaviour program at the School of Liberal Studies. She is a cognitive scientist by training. She did her undergraduate in Psychology from University of Allahabad and postgraduate in cognitive science at centre of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Allahabad. During her masters she worked on research titled “Planning of Sequential Saccades In Search of Face” using eye tracking methodology. Further, she worked as Junior Research fellow on a project titled "An Impact of Literacy on Cognitive Functioning of Illiterates Adults- A fMRI Study" at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, in collaboration with Max Planck Institute, The Netherlands.

Additionally she worked as a research assistant at the Centre of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Allahabad, on a project titled "Influence of Attention on the Control of Eye Movement" using eye-tracking and EEG as a methodology. At present, she is pursuing her doctoral research in Psychology at Indian Insitute of Technology Delhi, under the supervision of Dr. Sumitava Mukherjee. and uses training in decision research to understand the role of magnitude in loss aversion under risk. Her research has been published in several reputed international journals including Cognition and Journal of Experiemental Psychology.

Mrs. Khan joined UPES as an Assistant Professor in January 2024. Before joining UPES, she worked as teaching assistant during the four years of her PhD at Indian institute of Technology wherein she assisted for the courses such as introduction to psychology, introduction to cognitive science, cognitive process: from labs to field to undergrautes and postgrautes. During that time, she also delivered guest lectures on experiment building using psychopy for the course basic of programming for cognitive science to post graduate students.

Mrs. Khan has a keen interest primarily in the area of human judgment and decision-making, with a specific focus on the psychological valuation of gains and losses. Her groundbreaking PhD work delves into unveiling the role of magnitude in loss aversion for risky choices, challenging existing theory and offering potential theoretical advancements in behavioral science. Beyond her PhD research, Mrs. Khan has a strong interest in applied research concerning magnitude and numerical cognition. Her work on "Magnitude Judgment in the Numerical and Temporal Domains," explores how individuals estimate numbers, time, and changes in quantity. Notably, she collaborated with Berkeley Haas on a study investigating people's understanding of the exponential growth of COVID-19 and its impact on adopting non-pharmaceutical interventions. Her interest extends to the evaluation of increases and decreases in physical quantity through visual interfaces, like progress bars, as well as the perception of waiting times in human-computer interfaces and their impact on affective judgment and service evaluation. She is interested in understanding decision-making processes and aspires to bridge the gap between theory and real-world implications through her research.

Mrs. Khan advocates for an innovative learning environment through the integration of new technologies, emphasizing active learning with virtual simulations and collaboration platforms. She supports flexible curriculum options and self-paced learning to accommodate diverse learning styles. She believes in promoting interdisciplinary collaboration and experiential learning that connects theory with practice. For her, continuous assessments and timely feedback are integral to support students’ growth. Engaging in interactive class sessions, she fosters communication skills, creating a supportive classroom culture for teamwork and inclusivity. Her approach ultimately seeks to cultivate critical thinking and problem-solving skills in students.

She has taught courses like Sports Psychology, Psychological Assesment to undergraduate students at UPES.

Mrs. Khan has earned prestigious awards and grants. She received a Research Scholar Travel Grant from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, facilitating her work presentation at the ICPS Annual Convention 2023 in Brussels, Belgium. Mrs. Khan also obtained a Travel and Accommodation Grant from the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) for the 5th Bangalore workshop at the Centre for Neuroscience, IISc, Bangalore in 2018. In the academic year 2017-18, she was awarded a Junior Researcher Fellowship in a project funded by the Department of Science and Technology. Additionally, Mrs. Khan qualified for the National Eligibility Test conducted by the University Grant Commission. She received the Award of Excellence in 2016 from the University of Allahabad for a Certificate of Merit in Cognitive Science (2014-2016) and was a recipient of the Masters Fellowship during her master's program at the Centre for Behavioral and Cognitive Science, University of Allahabad.

Mrs. Khan has made significant contributions to the fields of decision-making and cognitive science through series of impactful presentations at various national and international conference. Her doctoral research, delving into the intricate dynamics of magnitude-dependent loss aversion in risky choices, garnered appreciation at various conferences. Notably, she presented her work at the 10th edition of the Annual Conference of Cognitive Science 2023 and also delivered an oral session at the Judgment and Decision Making Conference 2023, hosted at IIT Kanpur.

Additionally, her empirical work investigating the magnitude-dependent hypothesis of loss aversion was accepted for oral presentation at the Behavioral Research in Economics Workshop-Economic Science Association at IIT Mumbai in 2023 and was also selected for a poster presentation at the Society of Judgment and Decision Making (SJDM) Conference in San Francisco in November 2023.

On the global stage, Mrs. Khan presented a poster at the International Convention of Psychological Sciences (ICPS) Annual Convention in Brussels, Belgium, in March 2023. Her presentation challenged conventional notions of loss aversion, emphasizing the centrality of magnitude in rethinking this theory. In 2022, she was selected for a poster presentation at the Annual Convention of the Society of Judgment and Decision Making at UCSD Rady School of Management in San Diego.

Beyond her PhD, Mrs. Khan has actively presented her research work at prestigious national and international conferences. In 2022, her work was selected for a poster titled "Finding Effective Visualization Formats to Correct the Exponential Growth Bias and Increase Support for Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions to Combat COVID-19" at the APS Annual Convention in Chicago, Illinois. This poster was later presented at the 31st Annual Convention of the National Association of Psychology hosted by IIT Bombay. She also presented her work "Preference for Using Predictions from Humans over Algorithms Goes Beyond Perceived Accuracy" at the Society for Judgment and Decision Making Conference in 2022. In 2019, Mrs. Khan presented her research on "Magnitude Judgment in Numerical and Temporal Domain" at Pondicherry University during the 29th Annual Convention of NAOP.

ouroz.khan@ddn.upes.ac.in