Kushin Mukherjee

I am a postdoctoral scholar in the Cognitive Tools Lab at Stanford University. I'm broadly interested in the human ability to use and understand visualizations (charts, graphs, drawings) in service of communication and discovery. My research focuses on developing computational cognitive models of visualization understanding to both (1) better characterize human cognition and (2) bridge the gap between modern AI systems and human-like understanding of visual concepts.

I completed my PhD in Psychology at UW-Madison while based in the Knowledge and Concepts Lab and the Schloss Visual Reasoning Lab. I also interned at Apple AIML working with the Vis team on chart understanding in vision-language models. I was also fortunate to be a Kohler Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, which has let me think about how science and art can intersect to give rise to fun new ideas. Much of my work has been the product of engaging and thoughtful collaborations with members of the Social Interaction Lab (SoIL) at Stanford, the Visual Intelligence and Technological Advances Lab at York, and the Neuroscience of Cognitive Control Lab at Princeton. Prior to graduate school, I received my AB in Cognitive Science and Japanese from Vassar College, where I was advised by Ken Livingston and Josh de Leeuw. I also spent a summer at the Computation and Cognition Lab at Stanford as a CSLI intern, working with Judy Fan and Robert Hawkins (and continue to today!).