Surya Gayet

Dr. Surya Gayet is an Assistant Professor in Experimental Psychology at Utrecht University's Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. As head of the CAP-Lab, they lead research on consciousness, attention, perception, and working memory through collaborations with the Visual Cognitive Neuroscience Lab (Donders Institute) and Attention Lab (Utrecht University).

Research focuses on how sensory input transforms into conscious experience using psychophysics, computational modeling, eye-tracking, fMRI, and EEG. Key areas include visual perception dynamics, working memory mechanisms, and attentional selection processes. Recent work explores multisensory integration, statistical learning in perception, and neural representations of object size in natural scenes.

Publications reveal strong emphasis on temporal dynamics of visual processing, cross-modal perception, and memory resilience. Current projects examine citizen science applications for visual perception training and viewpoint-dependent object representation.

• NVP Early Career Award (2023)
• NWO VENI grant (2019)
• NWO Science Communication grant 'LerenKijken.nl' (2025)
• Utrecht University Starting Grant (2023)

Supervises multiple PhD candidates including Luzi Xu (recently defended), Kabir Arora, Yichen Yuan, Giacomo Aldegheri, and Dan Wang. Secured substantial funding including €250,000 NWO VENI grant and €150,000 NWO communication project. Currently writing a popular science book on consciousness through Unieboek | Het Spectrum.

The CAP-Lab maintains active collaborations with Donders Institute and Utrecht University's Attention Lab, focusing on real-world applications of perception research through citizen science initiatives with vocational education students and security experts.