Annya Dahmani

I am a third year Cognitive Science PhD student at UC Berkeley, advised by Alison Gopnik. I am also affiliated with Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR). I am supported by the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship and a Chancellor’s Fellowship from UC Berkeley.

I received my BS in Cognitive Science with a Specialization in Computing from UCLA in June 2022 where I graduated with Departmental Honors and Cum Laude. At UCLA, I mainly worked with Tao Gao in the Visual Intelligence Lab and was awarded the Dean's Award for Life Science Research. I also had the opportunity to be a summer intern at Yale University working with Julian Jara-Ettinger in the Computational Social Cognition Lab.

You can email me at adahmani [at] berkeley.edu

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My research is at the intersection of cognitive science and artificial intelligence, with a focus on building AI systems inspired by human cognition — particularly in learning and reasoning. I draw on decades of research showing how humans learn rapidly and flexibly about the physical and social world, highlighting capabilities that remain beyond current state-of-the-art AI.

I am interested in leveraging insights from cognitive science to evaluate and understand the capabilities of LLMs and VLMs, and I am currently looking to expand further into this area. My interests extend to AI safety, alignment, and evaluations.

Feel free to reach out to me - happy to connect!