• PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience (summa cum laude), University of Hamburg & University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany
• MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience, University of the Basque Country & Basque Center on Cognition, Brain & Language, Spain
• BSc in Psychology, Beijing Normal University, China

Dr Lei Zhang obtained his BSc in Psychology from Beijing Normal University, China, and his MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience at Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, Spain. He received his PhD (summa cum laude), along with a one-year transition postdoc, with Dr Jan Gläscher at the Institute of Systems Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany. Between 2016 and 2017, he was a Roche intern for Scientific Exchange (RiSE) at one of the research-based pharmaceutical companies, F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG, based in Basel, Switzerland. Between 2019 and 2022, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Prof Claus Lamm at the Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Unit (SCAN-Unit), University of Vienna, Austria. Dr Zhang joined the Centre for Human Brain Health, Institute of Mental Health, and School of Psychology at University of Birmingham as an Associate Professor in winter 2022.

Learning and decision-making, flexible & adaptive (learning) behavior, decision neuroscience/neuroeconomics, social learning, reinforcement learning, cognitive modeling, Bayesian methods, neuroimaging, fMRI, TMS, pain, aversive learning, computational psychiatry