left to right: Kathleen Medriano, Lukas Mayer, Guiyou Guan
  • July 22, 2026

  • UC Irvine Center for Theoretical and Behavioral Sciences awards inaugural Luce Fellowship alongside Summer Graduate Fellowships for theory building

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From uncovering new ways to analyze complex data and understanding how humans make decisions alongside AI to examining the forces that shape health insurance pricing, three graduate students in the UC Irvine Center for Theoretical Behavioral Sciences have been recognized for research advancing theory in the mathematical and behavioral sciences.

Kathleen Medriano, cognitive sciences, is the inaugural recipient of the Luce Family Fellowship in Mathematical and Behavioral Sciences. Endowed with a gift from Carolyn Scheer, the fellowship honors her late husband, R. Duncan Luce, who was a UC Irvine Distinguished Professor of cognitive sciences from 1988 until his passing in 2012. Luce helped to shape modern psychology and game theory in the 1950s, earning him the National Medal of Science and cementing UC Irvine’s reputation as an academic leader in mathematical and behavioral science.

As the first Luce Family Fellow, Medriano will continue developing statistical, mathematical and computational methods that support the scientific process for cognitive scientists.

“Rather than solving a scientific problem or question, I think more deeply about how to come up with methods suited for the needs of the cognitive sciences as a field,” she says.

Her funded project explores data-driven approaches for plausible model development. “These techniques can aid theory-building in areas of behavioral and social sciences where empirical work has not yet led to formal specification,” she says.

Lukas Mayer, also from cognitive sciences, and Guiyou Guan, economics, are the CTBS Summer Fellows.

Mayer’s project uses cognitive modeling as a quantitative method for theory building to understand when human-AI collaboration is and is not beneficial.

“UCI is remarkably strong in cognitive modeling; there really only are a handful of universities in the world with a comparable density of people active in this area,” he says.

Guan's research applies economic modeling to understand market dynamics and pricing mechanisms across various economic systems.

"I'm grateful for the opportunity to work with world-class faculty researchers at UCI, which has been invaluable for my research development and collaboration,” he says.   

The three fellows are spending the summer advancing their work alongside CTBS faculty, supported by $10,000 in research funding. Equally valuable, they say is the interdisciplinary and intellectually diverse community the center fosters.

“CTBS enables a thoughtful, creative and multi-facetted research environment that allows us to think about research questions in a more holistic way than would normally be expected,” says Mayer. “The research that CTBS and centers like it make possible allow for a much more considerate conversation about people and technology that goes beyond pure metrics, but is instead also concerned with scientific understanding, and the wider societal context in which we interact with these technologies.

“As the interest in particular technologies may come and go, the insight gained through deep deliberation of the processes that inform our curiosities of the present day will keep compounding,” he adds. “For that reason, I believe CTBS and centers like it will continue to grow in importance.”

Medriano agrees.

“I regret that I only discovered CTBS late in 2025, but better late than never,” she says. “What I find most meaningful about it is its recognition that rigorous theory is not a luxury in these fields but a genuine necessity. The behavioral, psychological, and cognitive sciences are still relatively young compared to some branches of the natural sciences, and that just means there is more work to be done and that we have to be careful and deliberate in shaping these fields toward maturity.

“I hope to maintain and deepen my connection with the center as I go forward, and I'd encourage other students to seek out spaces like it sooner than I did.”

About the Center for Theoretical Behavioral Science
The Center for Theoretical Behavioral Sciences explores the delicate balance between data and theory focusing on the interplay of consciousness and computational processes. Center collaborators and audiences are experts in computational and mathematically oriented research. They are social scientists poised to crack the next developments in artificial intelligences through new theories of intelligence, consciousness, and computation. Established in 2022, CTBS carries on the rich history of the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences (IMBS) which for three decades fostered a fruitful and symbiotic relationship between mathematics and the behavioral and social sciences. Learn more online.

-pictured left to right: Kathleen Medriano, Lukas Mayer, Guiyou Guan.

 

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