Jake Gerlofs.

Behavioural science, applied

I study how people pay attention, form expectations, and decide — and what that means for the products they use.

PhD researcher in cognitive neuroscience. Six years of mixed-methods research across behavioural labs and product teams. Based in Vancouver, BC.

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6+
years of research experience
10+
end-to-end studies led
1,600+
research participants
5
peer-reviewed papers

My research sits between behavioural science and product design. I run studies on how people direct attention, calibrate their confidence, and act on information — combining eye-tracking, large-scale clickstream experiments, and qualitative methods to answer questions product teams face.

I’ve published in peer-reviewed cognitive science journals, and I’ve also been the person in the room when a startup’s roadmap changed because of what I found in ten usability sessions. I think of both as the same job.

Research portfolio

Research that changed what got built

Applied and peer-reviewed studies I led end-to-end — from scoping the question to findings that shaped a product. Three highlights below; the full set is on the research page.

Applied0→1 B2BN=10

HR leaders didn’t need better data — they needed to know what to do with it.

As sole researcher on a 0→1 product, I combined stakeholder interviews, market research, and literature review to define V1 and build the measurement instrument — then usability testing moved the roadmap from measuring well-being to acting on it.

Read case study →
PublishedA/B · N=517

Believing the source mattered more than reading it.

Four online experiments found that beliefs about a source's trustworthiness biased decisions by up to 30% — more than the information itself.

Read case study →
Eye-trackingN=42

Task success dropped 55% past a visual-complexity threshold.

An eye-tracking study pinpointed the threshold at which visual complexity collapses user performance, with direct implications for dense UI design.

Read case study →
See sample case studies → See publications

Selected publications

Peer-reviewed and reproducible

Trust framing shifted decisions by ~30% — more than the information the source actually provided.

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics (2025)

Social awareness of one's own gaze shifts decisions as much as interface salience does.

Cognition (2022)

See all publications →

About

I’m a behavioural scientist and applied researcher — mostly asking why people do what they do.

I came to UX research through a question about why people look at what they look at. I started my PhD at UBC's Brain, Attention & Reality Lab in 2019 studying social attention — how attention and cognition are shaped by and for social interactions. That question turned out to be a product question in disguise: the same mechanism shapes how users navigate interfaces where their activity is visible, collaborative, or judged.

Over six years the work broadened: where people direct attention, what makes them trust information, when they feel confident in a decision, and how visual complexity limits what they can accomplish. I ran 10+ studies with 1,600+ participants and published in Cognition, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Cognitive Science, and others.

Halfway through, I took a research role at CheckingIn, a B2B health-tech startup — the only researcher, embedded with leadership. Working in an applied product context meant scoping ambiguous questions where what we were building was new; I refined the research direction as we learned, and the work ultimately pivoted the product roadmap. I'm now looking for a research role where both the rigour and the pragmatism are valued.

Outside research: Bishop's University Alumni Chapter Leader for Vancouver, avid skier and hiker, hockey fan, student of karate, freelance photographer, travel enthusiast, coffee nerd, salsa dancer, and urban-planning enthusiast.

Jake Gerlofs — behavioural scientist and UX researcher

Education & training

The training behind the research

Ten years of methods training — from neuroscience labs in France and China to a doctoral program at UBC — plus the funding and teaching that came with it.

Education

2019 – 2025

Ph.D., Cognitive Neuroscience — University of British Columbia

Brain, Attention & Reality Lab. Dissertation on social attention and decision-making; 10+ end-to-end studies across eye-tracking and large-scale behavioural experiments.

2015 – 2019

B.Sc. Psychology & Neuroscience (Honours with Distinction) — Bishop's University

Minor in Drama Studies. Lab coordinator in human behavioural research; graduated with distinction.

Awards & funding

  • NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship — Doctoral (2021)
  • NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship — Master's (2019)
  • Rhodes Scholarship Finalist, Province of Quebec (2019)
  • $215K+ in research funding secured, including a $75K Mitacs industry partnership
  • Best Early-Career Research Talk — Understanding Vision Conference
  • Research Poster Award finalist — Bishop's University Research Week
  • Undergraduate Prize in Psychology (2015–16 & 2016–17) — first-class standing in programme
  • Conference talks: Understanding Vision, CSBBCS, and ESCoP (European Society for Cognitive Psychology)

Teaching & mentoring

  • Teaching Fellow & Teaching Assistant, UBC (2019–2025) — classroom teaching, assessment design, and student support across cognition and methods courses.
  • Trained & supervised junior researchers on eye-tracking hardware setup and analysis protocols.
  • Built a research function from scratch at CheckingIn, embedded with startup leadership.

Research training

  • Visiting Scholar — Prof. Antonia Hamilton's lab, University College London (Fall 2024).
  • Lyon Neuroscience Research Centre, France — research intern (optogenetics, electrophysiology, behavioural testing).
  • Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, East China Normal University, Shanghai — research intern (episodic memory task design).
  • Methods: eye-tracking (EyeLink), mixed-effects modelling in R, experiment building in Python, psychophysics, LLM-assisted analysis.

Contact

Let's talk.

I'm open to research roles at product companies, consulting engagements, and conversations about behavioural science and UX.

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