Katja Doerschner received her PhD in experimental psychology from New York University in 2006. After postdoctoral research at the University of Minnesota, she was a faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Bilkent University from 2008 to 2020. She has worked at the National Magnetic Resonance Research Center (UMRAM) since its founding, and at the Aysel Sabuncu Brain Research Center, where she continues her work in the Computational and Biological Vision Group. In 2014 she spent a year as a visiting researcher in the Department of Cognitive Science at UCSD. With a Sofja Kovalevskaja Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, she leads an independent research group at Justus Liebig University Giessen in Germany, where she is a faculty member at the Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior.
Dr. Doerschner’s research focuses on visual perception. She studies how the brain builds a rich perceptual experience from retinal input that is inherently ambiguous. In particular, she investigates what information the visual system uses to estimate the properties of objects and how the brain extracts this information. Her work combines psychophysical experiments, computational modeling, pattern analysis, neuroimaging and patient studies.
Her research has been funded by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK), the Turkish Academy of Sciences (TÜBA), FP7, H2020 and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She has received several awards for her research, including TÜBA GEBİP, the TÜBİTAK Incentive Award and the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award.
Dörschner Brain and Perception Lab: 