About Me

I'm Yaren. I'm a PhD student at the University of Regina, working with Chris Oriet. I study the cognitive mechanisms underlying how we become familiar with faces.
I enjoy programming (like making this website), philosophy, yoga, and visual arts and design (like making this website!).

My PhD dissertation is about how the face space theory can incorporate face familiarity, and by extension, within-person variability. If you are really, really bored and have nothing else better to do, you can read my proposal here.
For my Master's thesis, I looked into ensemble coding as an underlying mechanism for face familiarity. If you are looking for a slightly more enjoyable read, check out our publication.

If you'd like to reach out, feel free to shoot me an email, or find me on X (@ren_koca).
You can also download my CV.