Rate My Professor Faisal Mushtaq

Professor Faisal Mushtaq is Professor of Cognitive Science in the School of Psychology at the University of Leeds. He earned his BSc in Psychology and PhD from the University of Leeds, with his doctoral thesis titled "Electrophysiological correlates of affective context and risk-taking in human decision-making." His areas of expertise encompass cognitive neuroscience, psychology, learning, decision making, sensorimotor processes, electroencephalography (EEG), virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR). Mushtaq's research lies at the interface of psychology, engineering, and computer science, adopting a multi-modal approach to investigate the relationship between action and cognition. This involves capturing neural activity using EEG, behavioral markers of performance through VR/AR in laboratory settings, and extracting real-world performance measures from large-scale datasets. His work advances the application of cognitive science principles to accelerate skilled behavior acquisition, such as in surgeons performing minimally invasive procedures and in developing human-like decision-making for robots.

Mushtaq founded the Immersive Cognition Research Group, which specializes in learning and skill acquisition using virtual environments, and serves as Director of the Centre for Immersive Technologies at the University of Leeds. He is Co-Director of the #EEGManyLabs projects, one of the world's largest replication efforts involving over 200 laboratories from more than 30 countries. A former Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute, he sits on the British Neuroscience Association's Credibility Advisory Board and participates in the Global Brain Consortium. He has received several national and international awards for contributions to neuroscience and virtual reality, including the British Neuroscience Association’s 2023 Credibility in Neuroscience Award as Principal Investigator of the #EEGManyLabs Project Team. Key publications include "Studying human behavior with virtual reality: The Unity Experiment Framework" (2020, Behavior Research Methods), "Brain–computer interface robotics for hand rehabilitation after stroke: a systematic review" (2021, Journal of Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation), "#EEGManyLabs: Investigating the replicability of influential EEG experiments" (2021, Cortex), "Feedback and motor skill acquisition using a haptic dental simulator" (2017, European Journal of Dental Education), and "The relationship between a child’s postural stability and manual dexterity" (2014, Experimental Brain Research).