Open Rank Faculty Cluster Hire Search for the New Department of Cognitive Science at Bocconi
Bocconi University is excited to announce the creation of a new Department of Cognitive Science. The mission of the Department will be to advance the understanding of the human mind and behavior through interdisciplinary research and education. It will unite, into a cohesive whole, researchers in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, computational psychology/artificial intelligence, social psychology and behavioral economics.
Collaboration between these approaches will be mobilized to study fundamental phenomena such as perception, attention, memory, emotion, etc. A key goal is to unveil, also through spillovers with other social scientists at Bocconi, the deep roots of individual and group behavior and how they help understand some of the world’s most pressing questions, from human-AI interaction, to economic and political instability, to improving the environment.
The New Department
The planned Department of Cognitive Science will consist of about 25 faculty.
They will conduct frontier research in all areas of cognitive science and teach courses in undergraduate and graduate programs at Bocconi geared at equipping our students with knowledge of the key forces shaping the human mind and individual behavior in social settings.
The Department will be equipped with the Bocconi Cognition Lab. In this interdisciplinary laboratory, researchers will explore the cognitive mechanisms that underlie decision making by using cutting edge techniques for measuring attention, memory and perception, behavioral measurements, non-invasive brain stimulation and activity recording, and computational modeling.
Bocconi offers very competitive compensation and research support aligned with leading European universities. New hires who are moving to Italy from abroad can apply for the “Rientro dei Cervelli” tax benefit which exempts 90% of remuneration from income tax, so only 10% of qualifying income is subject to taxation. The minimum duration of the tax benefit is 6 years, with possible extension up to 13 years (conditions apply).
Faculty Recruitment and Applications
Applications
We welcome applications from candidates at all levels with expertise in any area of cognitive science, including, but not limited to:
- Perception and attention
- Memory systems
- Reasoning and decision-making
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Computational modeling of cognitive processes and Artificial Intelligence
- Social Cognition
- Behavioral Economics
Applications will open in March 2026, with screening on a rolling basis beginning in April 2026.
Recruitment Committee
The Recruitment Committee consists of both Bocconi and non-Bocconi faculty:
- Nicolas Brunel (Bocconi University)
- Colin Camerer (California Institute of Technology)
- Chiara Fumagalli (Dean of the Undergraduate School, Bocconi University)
- Nicola Gennaioli (Bocconi University)
- Pascal Mamassian (CNRS, École Normale Supérieure, Paris)
- Camillo Padoa Schioppa (Washington University in St. Louis)
- Paolo Pinotti (Dean of the Faculty, Bocconi University)
- Joachim Vosgerau (Bocconi University)
- Elke Weber (Princeton University)
For further information, please contact: faculty@unibocconi.it
Cognitive Science Seminars
Bocconi has started a cognitive science seminar series, hosting distinguished scholars from leading universities worldwide.
10 March 2026
Sudeep Bhatia Psychology and AI, University of Pennsylvania, US
Joint seminar with the Department of Marketing
18 May 2026
Uri Gneezy Behavioral Econ, University of California, San Diego, US
Joint seminar with IGIER
17 June 2026
Christopher Summerfield Cognitive Science and AI, University of Oxford, UK
Joint seminar with the Department of Computing Science
17 September 2026
Klaus Oberauer Cognitive Psychology, University of Zurich, Switzerland
28 September 2026
William Brady Social Psychology, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, US
29 October 2026
Peter Dayan Computational Neuroscience, Max Planck Institute, Tuebingen, Germany
Joint seminar with the Department of Computing Science