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’m interested in applying insights from cognitive science to evaluate and better understand the capabilities of language models. My current projects focus on areas such as sycophancy, human–AI complementarity, curriculum learning, and exploration. More broadly, my interests extend to AI safety, alignment, and evaluation.

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