Andrew Coulson
While at the ACL
Andrew Coulson joined the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now Cancer Research UK) in September 1997 as a research fellow working on the RAGs project. He developed software to help doctors and counsellors assess the genetic risk of breast cancer in women. Andrew is also undertaking psychological research into decision making and the understanding of risk.Andrew studied psychology at University College London, and went on to obtain an MSc. in knowledge-based systems at the University of Sussex's School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences.
After working as a knowledge engineer at British Telecom's Advanced Systems Unit, he moved to Cardiff University's School of Psychology, where he lectured in artificial intelligence and obtained a Ph.D. in psychology.
Andrew's doctoral work was in Reversal Theory, a general psychological theory of motivation, emotion and personality. His specific research topic was "cognitive synergy", which can be broadly described as the experience of paradox in everyday life. Among his other academic interests are: phenomenological psychology; aesthetics, humour, metaphor and play; time perception; cognitive science, particularly neural networks; and the application of non-linear dynamics to psychology.