Professor Rachael Jack
- Professor of Computational Social Cognition (Centre for Social, Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience)
telephone:
01413305087
email:
Rachael.Jack@glasgow.ac.uk
62 Hillhead Street, Glasgow G12 8QB
Student office hours: please email to arrange an appointment.
Research interests
Rachael Jack is a Professor of Computational Social Cognition in the School of Psychology & Neuroscience and Head of the Centre for Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (cSCAN) at the University of Glasgow.
Jack's research has produced significant advances in understanding facial expression of emotion within and across cultures using a novel interdisciplinary approach that combines psychophysics, social psychology, dynamic 3D computer graphics, and communication/information theory. Most notably, she has revealed cultural specificities in facial expressions of emotion; that four, not six, expressive patterns are common across cultures; and that facial expressions transmit information in a hierarchical structure over time. Together, Jack’s work has challenged the dominant view that six basic facial expressions of emotion are universal, which has led to a new theoretical framework of facial expression communication that she is now transferring to digital agents to synthesize culturally sensitive social avatars and robots.
Jack’s work has featured in several high-profile scientific outlets (e.g., Annual Review of Psychology, Current Biology, Psychological Science, PNAS, TICS). She is currently funded by the European Research Council (ERC) to lead the research program Computing the Face Syntax of Social Face Signals, which will deliver a formal model of human social face signalling with transference to social robotics. She has been funded previously by the ESRC Future Research Leaders award, ESRC Open Research Area, and British Academy.
Jack is Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science (APS), recipient of the American Psychological Association (APA) New Investigator award, the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society (SANS) Innovation award, the British Psychological Society (BPS) Spearman Medal, Association for Psychological Science (APS) Rising Star award, and International Society for Research on Emotion (ISRE) Young Researcher Spotlight.
She is also Associate Editor at Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Affective Science, and previously Psychological Science, and on the Editorial Boards of Emotion, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition, and Behavior Research Methods.
Jack also serves several roles on the committees/boards for the conferences of the Society for Affective Sciences, IEEE Automatic Face & Gesture Recognition, ACM Intelligent Virtual Agents, and the Vision Sciences Society. She is Co-Chair of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) Global Engagement Committee, an ERC Advanced Grant panel member, and President-Elect of the Society for Affective Science (SAS).
Grants
Grants and Awards listed are those received whilst working with the University of Glasgow.
- SINA
EPSRC EU Guarantee
2022 - 2024
Supervision
Supervised Postgraduate Students
- Max Christou (Postgraduate)
- Monica Duta (Postgraduate)
- Valentina Gosetti (Postgraduate)
- Marie-Pier Plouffe (Postgraduate)
- Tobias Thejll-Madsen (Postgraduate)
- Yichen Wu (Postgraduate)
Research Assistants
- Chaona Chen (Affiliate/Leverhulme Early Career Fellow)
- Stephanie Cheng (Research Assistant)
- Jonas Noelle (Research Associate)
Professional activities & recognition
Prizes, awards & distinctions
- 2021: Elected Fellow (Association for Psychological Science)
- 2017: Spearman Medal (British Psychological Society)
- 2016: Rising Star (Association for Psychological Science)
- 2016: Innovation Award (Social and Affective Neuroscience Society)
- 2015: Young Researcher Spotlight (International Society for Research on Emotion)
- 2014: Elected Member (Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), Young Academy of Scotland)
- 2013: New Investigator Award (American Psychological Association)
Research fellowships
- Future Research Leaders Award - 2015: ESRC Post-doctoral Fellowship
Grant committees & research advisory boards
- 2020 - -: Dyson School of Design Engineering, Imperial College London, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) project RobotPatient
- 2021 - -: European Research Council, Advanced Grants
- 2018 - -: UKRI, Future Leaders Fellowships (FLF) Peer Review College
Editorial boards
- 2022 - 2024: Psychological Science
- 2021 - -: Behavior Research Methods
- 2020 - -: Affective Science
- 2020 - -: J Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition
- 2020 - 2020: PLoS Computational Biology
- 2019 - -: Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
- 2019 - -: Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
- 2019 - -: Emotion
Professional & learned societies
- 2021 - -: Elected Fellow, Association for Psychological Science
- 2016 - -: Elected member, Society of Experimental Social Psychology
- 2014 - -: Elected member, Royal Society of Edinburgh, Young Academy of Scotland
- 2013 - -: Selected Member (prize), American Psychological Association
- 2010 - -: Member, Society of Personality and Social Psychology
- 2009 - -: Member, Association for Psychological Science
- 2007 - -: Member, Vision Sciences Society
- 1998 - -: Member, British Psychological Society
Selected international presentations
- 2020: Keynote—Society for Personality and Social Psychology , Non-verbal Behavior pre-conference (New Orleans, USA)
- 2019: Keynote—Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) International Conference Paris, France on Intelligent Virtual Agents (Paris, France)
- 2019: Keynote—Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Lille, France Conference on Automatic Face & Gesture Recognition (Lille, France)
Supplementary
- HEAD OF CENTRE—Centre for Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (cSCAN); PRESIDENT-ELECT—Society for Affective Science (SAS); ASSOCIATE EDITOR—Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Affective Science, Emotion, Psychological Science; CONFERENCE COMMITTEES/BOARDS—Society for Affective Sciences, IEEE Automatic Face & Gesture Recognition, ACM Intelligent Virtual Agents, Vision Sciences Society. OTHER SOCIETY LEADERSHIP ROLES—Co-chair, Association for Psychological Science, Global Engagement Committee.