Hedderik van Rijn

 
Experimental Psychology / Statistical Methods and Psychometrics
University of Groningen

Short CV

After studying Cognitive Science at the Radboud University Nijmegen (1991-1996), Prof. dr. Hedderik van Rijn (1972) obtained his PhD (University of Amsterdam, 2002) on a thesis focussing on computational modeling of scientific discovery and cognitive development processes. Between 2002 and 2004, he was a Post-doctoral Research Associate at Carnegie Mellon University, working with John R. Anderson. In 2005, he started a tenured assistent professor position at the Department of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Groningen, and since 2009 he is working at the Department of Psychology of the same university, now as chair of "Cognitive Science and Neurosciences". From 2020 to 2021, he headed the Department of Experimental Psychology. His group studies all aspects of time in cognitive performance with behavioral and neuroscience (EEG, MEG, fMRI) methods. These experiments are informed by and provide support for computational models which provide stringent, formal accounts of theories on interval timing.

He is also the principal investigator of the SlimStampen/RuggedLearning system that uses computational cognitive models to personalize the learning of facts. Using this system, learners score about a full grade point higher (~ 10 to 15% improvement) on a test in comparison to more traditional adaptive systems. About 800.000 students in secondary education in the Netherlands now use this system as it has been incorporated in the online educational materials of Noordhoff Publishers (see, for example Grande Lignes, in Dutch). Since 2021, Van Rijn is founding director of SlimStampen B.V., an independent spinoff company of the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, that focusses on research into and utilization of the SlimStampen principles to optimize learning and assessment.

Van Rijn and students supervised by him have obtained numerous grants, both at international and national levels, including the highly prestiguous VICI grant of the NWO (the Dutch Science Foundation). Please consult his Google Scholar page for an up to date list of publications.

Further details can be provided upon request.