Rate My Professor Joy Geng

Joy J. Geng is a Professor and Vice Chair in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Davis. She earned her Ph.D. in Psychology from Carnegie Mellon University, where she conducted research under Marlene Behrmann, and her B.A. in Psychology from Cornell University, beginning her research career with Michael Spivey. After her doctorate, she completed postdoctoral fellowships at University College London with Jon Driver and at UC Davis with Ron Mangun, before joining the UC Davis faculty as an Assistant Professor. She received the Hellman Fellowship in 2010 to support her early career research.

Professor Geng directs the Geng Attention Lab at the Center for Mind and Brain, investigating how behavioral goals, prior experiences, and future expectations interact to guide perception and cognition. Her studies examine attentional prioritization, distractor suppression, and the integration of top-down goal-directed signals with bottom-up sensory information during visual search tasks. Employing advanced methods including eye-tracking, psychophysics, virtual reality, fMRI, EEG/ERPs, TMS, pharmacology, and patient populations, her work addresses attention mechanisms in healthy individuals, aging, and schizophrenia. Notable publications include 'Attentional mechanisms of distractor suppression' (Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2014), cited over 330 times; 'Re-evaluating the role of TPJ in attentional control: contextual updating?' (Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 2013), with over 500 citations; 'Good-enough attentional guidance' (Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2023); and 'Template-to-distractor distinctiveness regulates visual search efficiency' (2019). With over 6,000 total citations, her research has significantly influenced cognitive neuroscience. In 2020, she received a James S. McDonnell Foundation Opportunity Award for collaborative work on VR applications in memory and attention. Professor Geng teaches courses in Cognitive Neuroscience, Perception, and Research Methods in Psychology, serves as an action editor for Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, and contributes to university standing committees.