Judith Ellen Fan

Judith Ellen Fan is a Courtesy Assistant Professor at Stanford University, holding primary appointment in the Department of Psychology and courtesy appointments in the Graduate School of Education and the Department of Computer Science. She directs the Cognitive Tools Lab, focusing on how humans use physical representations to learn, communicate, and solve problems through interdisciplinary approaches combining cognitive science, computational neuroscience, and AI.

Her research interests span cognitive tool development, data visualization literacy, educational technology, and developmental psychology. Key areas include understanding how drawing and sketching shape memory and conceptual representation, evaluating machine comprehension of visual and physical concepts, and designing human-centered AI systems.

Recent work emphasizes benchmarking human and machine abilities in physical dynamics understanding (Physion++), evaluating data visualization literacy (CHART-6), and analyzing large-scale drawing datasets (THINGS-drawings). These projects bridge cognitive science with AI to advance both fields through shared benchmarking frameworks.

Judith has received funding for projects on cognitive tool development and human-AI collaboration. Her lab collaborates across disciplines, emphasizing empirical studies with human participants and algorithmic benchmarking. Notable datasets include the 1,854-concept THINGS-drawings collection and Physion++ physical prediction benchmarks.