FOUNDER

Kirsten Hilger is a cognitive neuroscientist who studies the neurobiological foundations of individual differences in human cognitive ability, with a particular focus on intelligence and large-scale brain network organization. She earned her PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience in 2018 at Goethe University Frankfurt, where she investigated the neural bases of intelligence from a graph-theoretical network neuroscience perspective.

In her research, Hilger uses neuroimaging-informed network models and predictive approaches to examine how distributed patterns of brain organization relate to general cognitive ability and personality-relevant variability. Alongside this work, she has expanded her interests to include virtual reality applications for studying pain-related fear and chronic pain.

Through her publications and community-facing efforts, Hilger contributes to a growing body of evidence that intelligence is supported by coordinated interactions across whole-brain systems rather than isolated regions.

FOUNDER

Erhan Genç is a neuroscientist and psychologist who leads the Neuroimaging and Interindividual Differences group at the Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors (IfADo) in Dortmund, Germany. He is also a W2 Professor of “Neurowissenschaftliche Grundlagen der differentiellen Psychologie” at TU Dortmund University (with his research activities based at IfADo).

His work investigates how interindividual differences in behavior and cognition are reflected in brain structure and function, using neuroimaging methods to link neural variation to psychological variability.

Genç completed his PhD training at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt am Main (2008–2012), then worked as a research associate in Biopsychology at Ruhr University Bochum (2012–2020) before establishing his junior research group at IfADo in 2020. He studied psychology (Diploma) at the University of Mannheim.

FOUNDER

Matthew Euler is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Utah whose research examines how neural dynamics support cognitive abilities, with a long-standing emphasis on EEG and event-related potentials as markers of individual differences.

His lab investigates principles linking EEG activity to cognitive performance, the translational potential of electrophysiological markers (including work relevant to dementia risk and Alzheimer’s disease), and conceptual questions about the nature and measurement of cognitive differences. In the coming years, he aims to broaden this toolkit to include additional measures of cognitive health and disease such as pupillometry, eye-tracking, movement sensing, and MRI, bridging basic neuroscience with clinically relevant assessment.

Euler received his PhD (2010) and MS (2007) in Psychology from the University of New Mexico, completed a postdoctoral fellowship in adult clinical neuropsychology at the Medical College of Wisconsin (2010–2012), and earned a BA in Psychology & Philosophy from New Mexico State University (2003).

FOUNDER

Rex Jung is a clinical neuropsychologist and brain imaging researcher affiliated with the University of New Mexicoand the Mind Research Network in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His work spans the neuroscience of intelligence and creativity as well as brain and mental health, and he has described this broader orientation as “positive neuroscience”—studying both brain disease and what the brain does well.

Jung’s research links behavioral differences (including intelligence, personality, and creativity) to brain structure and function in healthy individuals and in neurological and psychiatric conditions, with publications across topics such as traumatic brain injury, lupus, schizophrenia, and cognitive ability.

He has also contributed to the intelligence research community through professional service, including leadership roles in the International Society for Intelligence Research (ISIR).