The Cognitive Tools Lab is directed by Prof. Judith Fan and located in the Stanford Department of Psychology. The lab also has a presence at UC San Diego, where several lab members are continuing their graduate studies.

Our lab employs converging approaches from cognitive science, computational neuroscience, and artificial intelligence to reverse engineer the human cognitive toolkit, especially how people use physical representations of thought — such as sketches and prototypes — to learn, communicate, and solve problems.

Our work is generously supported by the National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, Stanford Human-Centered AI Institute, Stanford Accelerator for Learning, and Adobe.