Meet Dr. Sandra Andraszewicz.

I am a behavioural and cognitive scientist translating scientific findings to important economic, societal and business problems. My research focuses on decision making in complex environments including digital spaces, financial systems and business environments with the goal to foster people's resilience through the combination of behavioural science and policymaking practices. I contributed empirical findings on topics such as the abuse of public goods, use of online trading apps, social influence, decision making in dynamically changing environments. A big part of my work is devoted to developing Open Science methodology. I have led the development of the Zurich Trading Simulator and the Resilience and Tech Database. My work also includes improving measures to elicit risk preferences in agreement with the MiFiD regulation, development of a belief elicitation method, developing a measure of co-similarity between choice options, increasing the attractiveness of artificial voices for e-commerce and explaining economic decisions through models. I closely works with industry partners, where the most recent include TWINT, SwissBorg and SIX. I am a scientific supervisor of Finamplio. Apart from research, I offers courses for bachelor, master, doctoral and continuing-education business students.

Currently, I head the behavioural finance research at the Chair of Cognitive Science, ETH Zurich. My mandates include a co-Principal Investigator of Future Resilient Systems Programme at the Singapore-ETH Centre, an affiliate of the ETH Risk Center, a lecturer at the Center for Economic Psychology of the University of Basel and a behavioural science expert for the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive agency of the European Union. I hold an interdisciplinary Bachelor's degree in science and social science from the University of Utrecht, a Master's degree in cognitive science in informatics from the University of Edinburgh, a postgraduate diploma in financial mathematics from AHG Technical University in Cracow and a PhD degree in economic psychology from the University of Basel. I have conducted research stays at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, California Institute of Technology in the United States and at CREATE in Singapore.

Contributing to our communities is crucial for their development. In 2012, I initiated and co-founded SAGT - the first "Polish ivy league" high-school alumni association in Poland. The association unities alumni of Gdynia Bilingual High School No. 3 through networking, social meetings and information exchange platforms and it supports current students through scholarships, awards and a mentoring programme.

As part of my contribution to the administrative tasks in research, I have worked as a reviewer for several behavioural science journals. I have reviewed research grants for the SNF (Swiss National Foundation) and for NCN (Narodowe Centrum Nauki). Also, I am active in the governing structures of the the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences (D-GESS) at the ETH Zurich.

Travel and outdoor adventures are an integral part of Sandra's career and lifestyle. Read more about her projects in section World-learning.

What is cognitive science?

It is an interdisciplinary scientific field encompassing psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, artificial intelligence, robotics and philosophy. It makes use of a wide range of empirical and experimental methods including gamified tasks (also called micro-worlds mimicking real-life situations), controlled experiments (commonly known as A/B testing), surveys, behavioural analytics (using existing data to make inferences about human behaviour and its motivation), cognitive modeling (modeling human conscious and unconscious decision strategies), machine and statistical learning, advanced statistics, biological and physiological correlates of behaviour, text analyses and whatever method proves useful to study human behaviour. The goal of cognitive science is to not only observe behaviour, but also to understand its underpinnings to make inferences about the complexity of the world we live it. Translating this knowledge into models and algorithms helps us make forecasts, explain important social phenomena and create technology-based tools, such as decision-support tools, AI or robots.

What is behavioural science?

It is a branch of science that is concerned with a systematic investigation of (primarily) human behaviour. It encompasses a range of scientific disciplines at the intersection of natural and social sciences, such as psychology, neuroscience, economics, sociology anthropology or linguistics. Behavioural insights can inform policy-making, marketing, product design, management, leadership decision-making and data management

Behaviour or Cognition?

Studying human behaviours is essential to understand the functioning of complex social systems such as societies, financial markets, and organisations. However, behaviour is not always self-explanatory and it does not tell us why people behave the way they behave. This is where cognitive science comes into play. It uses various methods to explain the cognitive (mental/brain) processes underlying the human behaviour. These methods include cognitive modelling, self-reports, structured tasks, philosophy, behavioural analytics and artificial intelligence.