Reza Habib, PhD

Background

Cognitive Science Applied to Real-World Questions

I've spent 25 years trying to understand why people make the decisions they do — and what happens in the brain when those decisions go wrong.

As a cognitive neuroscientist at Southern Illinois University, my research uses brain imaging to examine memory, impulsivity, and decision-making. My work on pathological gambling — particularly the neuroscience of the "near-miss effect" — has been published in leading scientific journals and featured in The Atlantic, Time Magazine, and NPR's This American Life. With an h-index of 32 and more than 7,900 citations, my research has shaped how scientists, clinicians, and policymakers understand behavioral addiction.

For the past six years I've also served as a senior academic administrator — overseeing a $2M budget, 25 faculty members, and 500+ students. That experience gave me something most researchers don't have: a deep understanding of how organizations actually work, make decisions, and use data.

I bring both of those things — rigorous scientific expertise and practical organizational experience — to every engagement. Whether I'm helping a legal team understand the neuroscience of gambling disorder, advising a behavioral health startup on research design, or helping an institution make sense of its data, my goal is the same: to make complex science useful.

I'm currently accepting selective engagements for expert witness work, scientific advisory roles, research consulting, and speaking.

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