Colin DeYoung has been a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota since 2008. Previously, he received his PhD in psychology from the University of Toronto and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cognitive neuroscience at Yale University. He is currently the director of the Personality, Individual Differences, and Behavior Genetics area of his department and a member of the executive committee of the World Association for Personality Psychology. He is also co-chair of the Neurobiological Foundations workgroup in the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) consortium.

His research focuses on the structure and sources of individual differences in emotion, motivation, cognition, and behavior, using neuroscientific methods (primarily neuroimaging) to investigate their biological substrates. He has published over 100 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals in human neuroscience, personality, clinical psychology, and psychiatry. His work is organized around his general theory of personality, Cybernetic Big Five Theory, which identifies psychological and neurobiological functions associated with major personality traits as well as their connection to other elements of personality and various life outcomes, including mental illness.

During his stay at HIAS, Colin DeYoung plans to focus on research using electroencephelography (EEG) to better understand individual differences in brain function and their association with various psychological traits. His collaboration partner is Prof. Jan Wacker from the Department of Differential Psychology and Psychological Assessment at Universität Hamburg.

Colin DeYoung’s HIAS Fellowship is provided by federal and state funds acquired by Universität Hamburg in the framework of its excellence strategy.