Ayşe Candan Şimşek has been a postdoctoral researcher at IWM in the Perception and Action Lab since August 2023. She studies visual perception, the use of artificial intelligence agents and multimodality in educational settings, event cognition and film perception. Her research aims at understanding the basic processes behind the perception of dynamic visual events to transfer the knowledge to applied settings.

She received her doctorate in perception, cognition and development at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, United States in 2017. After her graduation, she worked as an Assistant Professor at Yasar University Psychology Department in Turkey for five years. There, she ran her own laboratory, taught undergraduate and graduate courses in cognitive psychology, mentored students, and advised master theses. She also conducted research that has been funded by university grants. She has many external collaborations such as with University College Dublin, Ireland, and German Institute for Adult Education / Leibniz Centre for Lifelong Learning in Bonn, Germany.