The EFFORT project is a collaborative endeavor combining the insights of different fields of study and know-how from various areas of expertise. Besides the core members of the Project Team, there are several other professionals who contribute to this venture in distinct ways. The project acknowledges the generous support provided by our esteemed Associates.
Philipp Denter
Philipp Denter is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Carlos III University of Madrid. He received his PhD in Economics and Finance from the University of St. Gallen in 2012 and holds an Undergraduate Degree in Economics from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. He is an applied microeconomic theorist and his main research interests lie in electoral competition, personnel economics, and the theory of contests. Philipp's involvement with the EFFORT project is underpinning the tournament with theory.
Constantino A. García Martínez
Constantino A. Garcia is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Information Technologies at University San Pablo CEU. He completed his PhD in computer science at the University of Santiago de Compostela in 2019. His research interests include biological signals processing and machine learning, especially regarding modelling and inference. Together with Abraham, he collaborates with the project on the measurement of effort using heart rate variability.
Carlos J. Gil-Hernández
Carlos J. Gil-Hernández is a PhD researcher at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the European University Institute (EUI), Florence. He completed a Double Degree Master’s program at Pompeu Fabra and Tilburg University, where he also worked as a research assistant. His research interests include child development, human capital formation, intergenerational social mobility, and policy evaluation. Carlos has been involved in the EFFORT project as visiting researcher at the WZB in Berlin and Carlos III University in Madrid.
Sebastiaan Mathôt
Sebastiaan Mathôt is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He was a Marie Curie Fellow at the Laboratoire de Pyschologie Cognitive in Marseille, France. Sebastiaan obtained his PhD at the VU University Amsterdam, where he focused on visual stability. His current research interests are eye movements, perception, and pupillometry, and particularly, the role that pupil-size changes play in how we perceive the world. He also developed an open-source program, OpenSesame, which we use in the EFFORT project to create and carry out experiments. Sebastiaan also advises the EFFORT project on psychophysiological issues, particularly in relation with pupillometry.
Luis Miller
Luis Miller is a tenured scientist at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in Madrid. Before he was an Associate Professor at the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, where he was also Simona's PhD supervisor. Some of his previous academic positions include Assistant to the Director and Postdoctoral Researcher at the Nuffield CESS in Oxford, and Research Associate at the Max Planck Institute of Economics. He obtained his PhD at the Complutense University of Madrid and his main expertise lies in the moral consequences of unemployment and in decision rules in legislative bargaining. Luis provides guidance on experimental design and implementation, and together with Jonas he is the Guest Editor of a special issue in the American Behavioral Scientist entitled "Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Effort".
Abraham Otero
Abraham Otero was born in Orense, Spain in 1978. He received a B.S. degree in physics in 2000 (with honors), and a Ph.D degree in computer science from the University of Santiago de Compostela, in 2005. He is currently Full Professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence and Head of the Biomedical Engineering Degree of University San Pablo CEU, and Visiting Professor of the University of Turabo, Puerto Rico. His research interests include metabolomics data analysis, biological signals processing, patient supervision and biological data mining. Abraham is the author of more than 100 scientific publications and 4 patents in these fields. Together with Constantino, he collaborates with the project on the measurement of effort using heart rate variability.
Daniel Schreij
Daniel Schreij studied artificial intelligence from 2000 until 2005. The curriculum largely consisted of courses from the fields of computer science and psychology, of which the former, in the end, attracted him more. He ended up obtaining his PhD in 2012 at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam under the supervision of prof. Jan Theeuwes and prof. Chris Olivers, and worked for five years as a postdoc thereafter. Nevertheless, programming always remained a large passion of his during all that time. In 2016, he decided to leave science and become a freelance programmer focusing on scientific software and he hasn't looked back yet. Daniel's role in the EFFORT project has been as the main computer programmer of the experiments in OpenSesame.
Manuel T. Valdés
Manuel T. Valdés holds a PhD in Sociology from the Complutense University of Madrid. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Sociology II at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia. In the past, he has worked at the National Institute of Statistics. His research focuses on the study of social stratification and educational inequality, having published in prestigious national and international journals such as Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, Social Science Research, and Rationality and Society. Manuel is currently collaborating with Jonas on a paper on the effect of fifth graders' month of birth on cognitive effort.