Davide Ahmar

LIFE Fellow since 2026, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

I am a PhD candidate in the IMPRS LIFE program, working with Marcel Brass (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) and Michael Gaebler (Max Planck Institute for Human Development) in Berlin (2026–2029). My research focuses on the multimodal processes that support interpersonal coordination and affiliation in face-to-face interactions and immersive virtual reality environments, combining neural, behavioral, and physiological measures.

I obtained a joint Bachelor’s degree in Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology from the University of Manchester (2018–2022) and a Research Master’s degree in Cognitive Neuroscience from the Donders Institute in Nijmegen (2022–2024). During my undergraduate training, I also worked at the Italian Institute of Technology in Rome (2020-2021) with Giacomo Novembre, investigating spontaneously emerging patterns of neural and behavioral synchrony in interacting dyads. For my MSc research, I worked with Ivan Toni on an interdisciplinary project that used live neurostimulation to enhance the effectiveness of exposure therapy for fear of public speaking. In this context, I developed a portable multimodal system to record  and quantify subtle avoidance behaviors during the patients’ live speeches.

Following my MSc, I moved to the field of animal cognition working at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (2025–2026), where I conducted a touchscreen-based study on mental simulation abilities in zoo-housed great apes with Christoph Völter. Over the last years, I have also been a core member of EnvisionBOX, a didactical open-science platform dedicated to sharing tools and methods for multimodal research on interaction and communication.

Dissertation project:

Multi-agent interactions in face-to-face and immersive virtual reality settings: A multimodal investigation