Our faculty members come from diverse backgrounds united by a common belief:
that the questions dismissed as trivial often reveal the most about who we are.
Dr. Voss spent fifteen years at the Max Planck Institute studying decision fatigue before a dinner party epiphany led her to question why she—and everyone she observed—consistently left exactly one bite of food on the plate. Her subsequent research on 'behavioral residuals' has become foundational to the field. She holds a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from ETH Zurich and a Master's in Gastronomy from the University of Bologna, which she describes as 'accidentally relevant.'
Behavioral residuals in consumption patternsDecision fatigue and meal completionThe psychology of 'almost finished'
Professor Chen's career began conventionally enough at MIT, where he studied phase transitions in materials science. His pivot came when he noticed that humans exhibit similar 'threshold behaviors'—the moment one decides to finally reply to an email, or the precise instant a 'quick break' becomes procrastination. He now leads our interdisciplinary Threshold Studies program, which has produced groundbreaking work on 'the point of no return in snack consumption.'
Human threshold behaviors and tipping pointsPhase transitions in decision-makingThe phenomenology of 'one more episode'
A former architect who became disillusioned with buildings that ignored how people actually behave in space, Dr. Okonkwo now studies the unwritten rules of physical distance. His paper 'The Urinal Problem: A Game-Theoretic Analysis' was rejected by fourteen journals before becoming our most-cited work. He holds degrees from the Architectural Association London and Cambridge, and once spent three months sitting in airport terminals taking notes.
Proxemic anxiety in public spacesUnwritten rules of elevator positioningGame-theoretic models of spatial negotiation
Dr. Petersen left a tenured position at Uppsala University after her department refused to fund research into 'micro-shame spirals.' At Sagacity, she has pioneered the study of how humans recover from small social failures—the wrong wave, the premature goodbye, the name forgotten mid-introduction. Her book 'The Graceful Exit: A Taxonomy of Social Escape Strategies' is required reading for all incoming students.
Micro-shame spirals and recovery trajectoriesSocial escape strategies and exit protocolsThe phenomenology of the wrong wave
Dr. Tanaka's research focuses on why people wait before responding—to texts, to emails, to questions—even when they know the answer immediately. Her background in linguistics (Waseda University) and behavioral economics (LSE) gives her a unique perspective on 'strategic delay as social performance.' She is currently investigating whether read receipts have fundamentally altered human communication or simply made existing anxieties visible.
Strategic delay in digital communicationThe semiotics of typing indicatorsRead receipt anxiety disorders
Why does Tuesday feel like nothing? Why do Sundays have a specific 'flavor'? Dr. Oduya, formerly of the University of Nairobi's psychology department, has dedicated his career to understanding the subjective experience of calendar time. His research on 'day-of-week affect' has revealed consistent cross-cultural patterns in how humans emotionally color their weeks. He is also investigating why 'five more minutes' is never five minutes.
Day-of-week affect and temporal coloringSubjective time dilation and compressionThe phenomenology of 'five more minutes'
Dr. Weatherby's departure from Oxford in 1998 is still discussed in certain circles. The dispute—over whether the semicolon had become 'a marker of pretension rather than clarity'—led her to found our Department of Linguistic Anxieties. Now 78, she continues to research the psychology of punctuation choice, arguing that how one punctuates reveals more about personality than any standardized test.
Punctuation as personality indicatorThe psychology of the semicolonOxford comma anxiety disorders
Trained as a physicist at UNAM and Stanford, Dr. Mendez became interested in human queuing behavior after spending two years analyzing traffic patterns. He now studies why the other line always seems faster, why people queue for things they don't want simply because others are queuing, and the complex social dynamics of 'cutting.' His work has practical applications in theme park design and grocery store optimization.
Queue selection optimization under uncertaintySocial dynamics of line-cutting and enforcementHerd queuing behavior and empty-queue anxiety