Achiel Fenneman

PhD Student

Achiel Fenneman is a Dutch native, born and raised within the general geographical region of Nijmegen. After a brief stint in the air force as an ace fighter pilot and as an astronaut for NASA, Achiel returned to civil life as a well-decorated war hero. Okay, maybe not.

Achiel has pursued his academic interests in Behavioural Psychology (Bachelor's degree),  Financial Economics (Bachelor’s degree) and Artificial Intelligence, all at the Radboud University, Nijmegen. During these years, he has spent a large number of hours in the NSM Decision Lab, with functions alternating between lab support, experimental support and conducting his own research.

Achiel pursued his Master’s degrees in Financial Economics (Radboud) and Cognitive Neuroscience (Donders/Radboud), both with a specialisation in experimental research. Achiel’s main topics of interests lie in the formal modeling of human behaviour and its neural correlates, with a specific focus on other-regarding preferences (or altruism for short). In this line of research, he attempted to determine which motives are most influential in the often-observed human drive for cooperation over selfishness. This project entailed the construction of formal models to capture such behavior (e.g. make a fancy-looking string of Greek characters)  and the indirect measurement of these preferences using neuroimaging (fMRI) methodologies.  As such, it lies squarely at the intersection between neuroscience and economics, right where Achiel feels most at home.

Apart from the research above, Achiel has a broader interest in behavioural, experimental and neuro-economics and game theory. He has looked into the computational simulations of game-theoretic agents in a virtual world. Whenever possible, Achiel also likes to go for a run in his free time.