Simon Ciranka

Simon Ciranka serves as a Research Scientist at the Adaptive Rationality center of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin since 2024, following a Salto Fellowship at Institut Nicod, École Normale Supérieure Paris (2023-2024) and postdoctoral research at the same Adaptive Rationality center (2021-2023).

His educational trajectory includes a Dr. rer. nat. from Free University Berlin (2021) and doctoral training at the Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research (2017-2020):

• PhD: Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research (2017-2020)
• Doctorate: Free University Berlin (2021)

Dr. Ciranka's research integrates computational modeling with developmental neuroscience to investigate adolescent decision-making under uncertainty. His work examines how socioeconomic status, social learning, and neuronal mechanisms shape risk perception and adaptive behavior. Key contributions include:

• Quantifying socioeconomic effects on reward valuation
• Modeling social influence as a double-edged sword in adolescence
• Linking reinforcement learning asymmetries to transitive reasoning
• Analyzing environmental statistics in developmental risk-taking

His 11 publications (2019-2025) reveal a cohesive research program advancing computational frameworks for adolescent decision science. The work demonstrates increasing methodological sophistication in modeling social-ecological influences on neural decision mechanisms, with recent emphasis on socioeconomic determinants and uncertainty processing.

Dr. Ciranka's research has been supported through competitive appointments including the Salto Fellowship and Max Planck Society positions. His collaborative work spans the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and international partners like University College London.

As a core member of the Adaptive Rationality Research Team, he contributes to the center's mission of investigating psychological and neural foundations of adaptive decision-making across the lifespan through computational, behavioral, and neuroimaging approaches.