Hi, I'm Shaida Abachi!

I am currently a contract User Experience Research Scientist at Meta Reality Labs where I design and conduct qualitative and quantitative research. The areas of study surrounding my research programs are visual perception, visual ergonomics, and visual comfort relating to optical components of virtual and augmented reality devices.

I am also a Cognitive Sciences PhD candidate working with Dr. Megan Peters at the University of California, Irvine. My work seeks to investigate the neural computations underlying perceptual metacognition in humans using fMRI. My current interests surround visual perception and metacognition—ultimately to better understand how they work so we can know why they break (i.e., disorders of cognition). I have also always been motivated to study human behavior, specifically how we make decisions.

I recieved my B.S. in Neuroscience from The Univeristy of California, Riverside. Throughout undergrad, I worked under Dr. Monica Carson and looked at how microglial mechanisms that detect neuronal injury might change throughout early development in mice. Although that work was quite different from my current graduate work, I believe I've gotten a better idea of studying the brain from both top-down or bottom-up approaches. There is no single right way to study the brain—there are many ways to tackle the same questions.

Overall, I have a passion for understanding brains, behavior, and data.

When I’m not confusing the comment keys when switching between MATLAB and Python in the same day, I’m probably playing video games, or hanging out with my pup.