The Department of Psychology is pleased to welcome new faculty member Vivian Paulun. Paulun comes to us most recently from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she held a postdoctoral fellowship with the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Prior to that, she worked with Roland Fleming at the University of Giessen in Germany. She completed her PhD through a joint program between Giessen University and Western University in Canada, and earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology at Giessen.
Hometown: Frankfurt, Germany—a city famous for its skyline and apple wine
How did you get into your field of research? In my PhD, I discovered that material properties—like weight or slipperiness—shape how we grasp objects, from where we place our fingers to how much force we use. Since we usually see an object before we touch it, this made me wonder: how do we perceive material properties just by looking? I began studying how people visually estimate qualities like stiffness or elasticity. This led me to bigger questions: how do we understand the physics of a scene at a glance and how do we represent the physical world in our minds and brains? Today, my research explores these questions by combining psychology experiments, computer models, and brain imaging.
My long-term goal is to develop a precise understanding of the perceptual and cognitive processes underlying visual intuitive physics, our ability to understand the physics of a scene at a glance. While current AI struggles with this central aspect of common-sense reasoning, humans do it effortlessly, learn continuously, and generalize across contexts. To explore this, I take a multidisciplinary approach: carefully measuring human performance in behavioral experiments, investigating the neural basis of visual intuitive physics, and building computational models that integrate what we know and predict new findings. Together, these approaches aim to reveal the cognitive, neural, and computational mechanisms behind human physical reasoning.
What attracted you to UW–Madison? I was drawn to UW–Madison for its outstanding psychology department and its stimulating intellectual environment. The department is full of fantastic colleagues and opportunities for exciting collaborations, both within and beyond psychology. I still remember my first campus visit on a winter day in January, the coldest day of the year, with icy roads and inches of snow, but the department was the opposite: warm, welcoming, and incredibly supportive—I immediately felt home.
What’s the most important lesson you wish to convey to students? Critical thinking! I hope students come to share my fascination with perception, but above all, I want them to develop the ability to think critically. I believe that every university class should empower students to question, analyze, and explore ideas deeply.
Do you feel your work relates to the Wisconsin Idea? If so, how? While my work is foundational and not directly applied, it relates to the human experience. People are naturally curious about how our brains and perception work—just think of the buzz around #thedress. Through science communication and outreach, I hope to help bring this research to a broader audience and contribute to the Wisconsin Idea.
What’s something interesting about your area of expertise that will make us sound smarter at parties? Each of your eyes has a blind spot, a tiny patch of your retina with no light-detecting cells. In daily life, you never notice it because your brain seamlessly fills in the missing information. But you can make the blind spot visible with a simple trick: hold your thumbs up in front of you, close your left eye, and focus your right eye on your left thumb. Slowly move your right thumb to the right, and at some point, it will disappear into your blind spot—then reappear again if you keep moving it.
Any hobbies or interests outside of your work? I enjoy running, yoga, and hiking, as well as wildlife photography and exploring new coffee shops and bakeries.