About me

Hello! I’m Kei Yoshida (吉田 慶 in Japanese; pronounced /ˈkeɪ/, just like the letter K), and I am a PhD candidate in cognitive science at Brown University (Providence, RI, USA), expected to graduate in May 2026. I work with Dr. William H. Warren in the Virtual Environment Navigation Lab (VENLab), Department of Cognitive and Psychological Sciences (CoPsy).

I am also pursuing a concurrent master’s degree in computer science (Brown CS) through Brown’s Open Graduate Education program.

My research interests lie in the ways individual pedestrians in motion perceive and act in dynamic environments, and in how their local interactions scale up to global patterns of crowd behavior. In my PhD research, I investigate influence mechanisms in crowd dynamics – specifically, how pedestrians influence each other’s movement and how these influences propagate through crowds.

Through my dissertation work and prior research, I have developed a strong interest in locomotion and navigation of humans and other animals, as well as safety research involving pedestrian and vehicular contexts. Beyond these topics, I am interested in various methodological approaches for analyzing complex systems, including network analysis, information theory, and agent-based models.

Please check out my research work here.

Before starting my PhD at Brown, I earned my B.A. in psychology and computer science at Coe College (Cedar Rapids, IA, USA). I worked with Dr. Benjamin Chihak, who introduced me to the world of locomotion and transportation safety research in natural and virtual environments.