Nikhil V. Lakhani

Welcome!

My name is Nikhil Lakhani, and I'm a post-bacc research assistant and wannabe cognitive scientist based in Philadelphia. I've created this website without much forethought, but I imagine it will be a sort of showcase of my professional work, haphazardly mixed with personal musings. Thank you for being here!

My research journey (so far)

As an undergraduate at Penn, I worked as an RA in Florian Schwarz's lab, culminating in my honors thesis on the role of syntax and context in pronoun processing. We recently published this work in Glossa Psycholinguistics! Since graduating in 2020, I served as a lab manager for Bonnie Nozari's lab formerly at CMU, where I worked on two projects related to speech errors and cognitive control in language. After a brief hiatus from research, I pivoted from language to the exciting field of decision-making. I am currently a lab manager at Joe Kable's lab back at Penn, investigating the neural correlates of delay discounting.

Along this journey, I've become increasingly motivated by the applications and implications of cognitive science for public policy. In my view, rigorous, replicable, and inclusive research should inform policies and legislation addressing criminal justice, education, urban planning, and much more. Behavioral science can also elucidate effective nudges and other interventions for social change, like inciting climate action and combating misinformation. My long-term goal is to pursue a career bridging the gap between research and practice.

Other interests

In addition to research, I am passionate about politics and the importance of civic engagement and voting. As a volunteer for the Environmental Voter Project, a group dedicated to increasing pro-environmental voter turnout (using behavioral science!), I helped organize door-to-door canvasses around Philadelphia during the 2024 election cycle.

I also have a selection of supposed hobbies and special interests that I pursue to varying degrees. These include:

  • LICENSE PLATES!
  • Researching my family history. I have a tree on Ancestry.com mapping 2500+ members of extended family.
  • Animals (esp. pudus and bison)