About Gorilla

Gorilla was launched on the 1st October 2016 and is created by Caul­dron Science.

We are spe­cial­ists in cre­at­ing soft­ware for behav­iour­al sci­en­tists. We started out as a con­sul­tan­cy service, devel­op­ing bespoke soft­ware for online research projects. With that expe­ri­ence, we realised we could create a tool that would give behav­iour­al sci­en­tists the freedom to make their own online exper­i­ments, quickly and easily.

Since 2016, Gorilla has grown from 3 people to a team of more than 10. We’re a mix of behav­iour­al sci­en­tists and soft­ware devel­op­ers, with a shared inter­est in board games, bad science jokes, and pushing the bound­aries of online research.

We also have an amazing com­mu­ni­ty of researchers who are gen­er­ous enough to help us improve our tools. You can see some of the things they’ve achieved with Gorilla on our pub­li­ca­tions page and join the dis­cus­sion in our Face­book Group.

Online research is a fast-growing field and we’re com­mit­ted to facil­i­tat­ing high quality research and open science. An overview of Gorilla is pre­sent­ed in our Behav­ior Research Methods paper, Gorilla in our midst: An online behavioral experiment builder. We have also pub­lished a peer-reviewed large-scale study of timing accu­ra­cy across plat­forms, web-browsers and devices.

In our desire to make life easier for researchers, and as sup­port­ers of Open Science prac­tices, Gorilla includes an open access repos­i­to­ry for sharing research mate­ri­als.  Explore Gorilla Open Mate­ri­als to dis­cov­er and clone a wide range of tasks, ques­tion­naires and exper­i­ments shared by our users.

The Team

Caul­dron is led by Jo Ever­shed (CEO) and Nick Hodges (CTO).

Jo Ever­shed loves pro­vid­ing behav­iour­al sci­en­tists with tools to lib­er­ate their work from the lab and accel­er­ate the cre­ation of evi­dence-tested inter­ven­tions. She holds a BSc in Psy­chol­o­gy from UCL and a BSc in Com­bined Studies (Eco­nom­ics and Busi­ness) from Oxford Brookes and was an Inno­vate UK Women in Inno­va­tion Award Winner.

Jo’s focus is on inspir­ing researchers to adopt online research methods be that with our BeOn­line con­fer­ence, core Gorilla Tools or through our Gorilla Games Studio.

Nick Hodges loves build­ing new tools. His back­ground in com­put­er games where he worked on some of its biggest and most pres­ti­gious fran­chis­es, such as Call of Duty, Lara Croft, Bio­haz­ard and Metal Gear Solid. He holds a BSc in Com­put­er Science from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bristol, and after grad­u­at­ing spent two years teach­ing English in Japan.

Nick is focused on build­ing new tools. You can see what’s coming soon here.

Dr Will Webster enjoys helping people. Not sure how to imple­ment that par­a­digm? Here’s an experiment tree he made earlier! Can’t get your ran­domi­sa­tion quite right? Oh, he’s already added a script to your task. Don’t know where to start in getting your MatLab task online? He’ll get you through it, step by step.

While fin­ish­ing his PhD in Engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge, Will became Cauldron’s first employ­ee in August 2015. He worked first on the DCAL portal before moving on to Gorilla full-time, devel­op­ing new fea­tures in for Task and Ques­tion­naire Builders. He also started the Gorilla Work­shop program, making custom scripts for users to fulfil their research needs

After a brief time away to focus on his Rowing Coach­ing and Per­son­al Trainer qual­i­fi­ca­tions, Will is back at Caul­dron running Gorilla’s Script­ing Con­sul­tan­cy program. He also helps out on the support desk and is devel­op­ing a new wave of improve­ments and fea­tures for Gorilla.

Clare Renshaw is fas­ci­nat­ed by how people make deci­sions. She com­plet­ed a BSc in Psy­chol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Warwick, which intro­duced her to behav­iour­al eco­nom­ics and the science of deci­sion making. She then went on to study an MSc in Applied Psy­chol­o­gy and Eco­nom­ic Behav­iour at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bath.

Clare’s focus is on cus­tomer success: making it easy for our users to get the best out of Gorilla. Her back­ground (includ­ing her own expe­ri­ence of design­ing online research projects) helps her to under­stand what researchers need to make good online research easy. Clare is also involved in various other projects, such as organ­is­ing the BeOn­line conference!

Klaudia Stanoch is fas­ci­nat­ed by mech­a­nisms of learn­ing and memory. She com­plet­ed a BSc in Cog­ni­tive and Clin­i­cal Neu­ro­science at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­min­ster and a MSc in Neu­ro­science at the Insti­tute of Psy­chi­a­try, Psy­chol­o­gy and Neu­ro­science, King’s College London.

Klaudia is pas­sion­ate about open, repro­ductible research prac­tices and loves to learn new research methods. She has gath­ered her research expe­ri­ence at insti­tu­tions includ­ing UCL Well­come Trust Centre for Neu­roimag­ing, The British Psy­cho­log­i­cal Society, Royal Hol­loway and Guy’s Hos­pi­tal. She is cur­rent­ly involved in memory-enhance­ment phar­ma­co­log­i­cal trials at the Centre for Neu­roimag­ing Sci­ences, KCL.

With her broad research back­ground, Klaudia works on imple­ment­ing new ways to elevate Gorilla cus­tomers’ learn­ing expe­ri­ence: she focuses on improv­ing Gorilla’s support pages and exper­i­men­tal data­base to help cus­tomers expand their cre­ative research potential.

Warren McFadyen finds few things more sat­is­fy­ing that inno­vat­ing solu­tions and solving prob­lems — this com­bi­na­tion has result­ed in someone who actu­al­ly enjoys hunting bugs through code. Having worked for several years as a full-stack web devel­op­er, he likes having the ability to con­tribute at what­ev­er stage a project needs from the hosting envi­ron­ment right up to break­ing things down in non-tech­ni­cal terms for an end-user.

War­ren’s focus is on col­lab­o­rat­ing on the Gorilla plat­form wher­ev­er required to increase its flex­i­bil­i­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty, as well as bring­ing his web devel­op­ment expe­ri­ence to bear on Caul­dron’s web­sites and com­mu­ni­ca­tion platforms.

Dr Catri­ona Silvey loves solving prob­lems and finding intu­itive ways to explain com­pli­cat­ed things. Start­ing from an under­grad­u­ate degree in English Lit­er­a­ture, she took a weird path through working in sci­en­tif­ic pub­lish­ing, doing a masters and PhD in lan­guage evo­lu­tion, and research­ing chil­dren’s lan­guage devel­op­ment in Chicago and London before decid­ing to look for oppor­tu­ni­ties outside academia.

After finding herself in the role of “des­ig­nat­ed tech person” in several dif­fer­ent labs, she is happy to be making that role offi­cial at Gorilla as a Solu­tions Devel­op­er. Her focus is on support, con­sul­tan­cy, and helping users get started on the plat­form. In her spare time, she is an author of science fiction and fantasy novels.

Eve Ouliel enjoys chat­ting with people about research, or any­thing at all really! Her main inter­ests focus on child devel­op­ment in the context of lin­guis­tics, psy­chol­o­gy, and psycholinguistics.

Eve com­plet­ed her MSc Psy­chol­o­gy degree at Anglia Ruskin Uni­ver­si­ty and wrote her dis­ser­ta­tion on how infants with dif­fer­ent neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal dis­or­ders explore and inter­act with objects. Eve also has a BA degree in English Lan­guage and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion from King’s College London, where her dis­ser­ta­tion focussed on the aeti­ol­o­gy of stut­ter­ing in young chil­dren and in trau­mat­ic brain injury patients.

Eve looks forward to helping researchers achieve their goals by taking their research online with Gorilla.

Dr Jamie Adams is fas­ci­nat­ed by the innu­mer­able methods used in the study of cog­ni­tion and the ways in which (seem­ing­ly small) method­olog­i­cal changes can inform a deeper under­stand­ing of under­ly­ing cog­ni­tive process­es. He is an advo­cate for col­lab­o­ra­tive Open Science prac­tices and believes method­olog­i­cal trans­paren­cy to be a key factor in the advance­ment of any sci­en­tif­ic field. He com­plet­ed his MSc in Brain Imaging and Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Birm­ing­ham with a dis­ser­ta­tion focused around the elec­tri­cal brain activ­i­ty of indi­vid­u­als with Miso­pho­nia (extreme sen­si­tiv­i­ty to certain sounds). Later, he returned to Keele Uni­ver­si­ty for his PhD in Psy­chol­o­gy, where he inves­ti­gat­ed the role of stim­u­lus format and dis­tinc­tive­ness in recog­ni­tion and estab­lished a novel Pho­to­graph Supe­ri­or­i­ty Effect.

He is eager to meet researchers from a range of dis­ci­plines to share his enthu­si­asm for the plat­form and discuss how Gorilla can empower them to move their research outside of the lab.

Portrait of Megan

Megan Beck loves data, research and people! She com­plet­ed a BSc in Psy­chol­o­gy and Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science at Uni­ver­si­ty of Leices­ter which sparked her inter­est in data col­lec­tion and the impor­tance of trans­par­ent and open research.

Cur­rent­ly, she is study­ing MSc in Data Science to explore data col­lec­tion and ana­lyt­ics further. Megan is excited to start apply­ing these new skills within her role within the Gorilla Support Team and help you with your online exper­i­ments and recog­nise Gorilla’s full poten­tial. Don’t hes­i­tate to get in touch!

Picture of Jade

Dr Jade Pick­er­ing loves research — the more open and repro­ducible the better! She com­plet­ed her BSc in Psy­chol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lincoln where she first nur­tured her inter­est in cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science and neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy. She then moved on to gain her MRes and PhD in Psy­chol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter where she focused on dif­fer­ent aspects of cog­ni­tion, motor control, and deci­sion-making in people with Parkinson’s.

She’s also worked in postdoc roles exam­in­ing the retrieval prac­tice effect, where she first started to use Gorilla. She realised that her pas­sions lay more in improv­ing behav­iour­al science as a whole and has a great inter­est in open science, usabil­i­ty, and accessibility.

Now, as Head of Product (UX Lead) and Cus­tomer Success she works to improve the user expe­ri­ence of the plat­form and encour­ages and empow­ers researchers to take their work online.

Jade Pickering

Dr Johanna Tomczak is fas­ci­nat­ed by com­mu­ni­ca­tion, be it science com­mu­ni­ca­tion or learn­ing another lan­guage, as she is trilin­gual herself. She com­plet­ed her BSc in Math­e­mat­ics, Com­put­er Science and Cog­ni­tive Science at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Greno­ble (France), before start­ing her PhD in Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leeds. Her PhD exam­ined the impact of bilin­gual­ism and ageing on the com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the cere­bral hemi­spheres from a behav­iour­al point of view.

At Gorilla, Johanna joined the support team, and you are likely to meet her in one of our webi­na­rs and onboard­ing events. In her free time, she is a big fan of rock climb­ing and hiking and has gone on several wild camping trips in Europe and Canada.

Jade Pickering

Jemma Taylor loves all things organ­i­sa­tion and plan­ning — where there is an idea she is already looking to make it reality. Jemma brings almost ten years of exec­u­tive assis­tance expe­ri­ence to the team, having sup­port­ed various c‑suite and board level roles within both com­mer­cial and non-profit landscapes.

As Exec­u­tive Assis­tant to our CEO and CTO, Jemma’s role at Gorilla focuses on core process­es and busi­ness plan­ning. With a keen inter­est in expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing and engage­ment, she has pre­vi­ous­ly exe­cut­ed a number suc­cess­ful events and is excited to get involved with future con­fer­ences and events at Gorilla.

Gorilla would­n’t be the product you see today without the help and support of our clients, col­lab­o­ra­tors, friends, col­leagues and employ­ees. Special thanks to: Dr Suzanna Forwood, Dr Daniel C Richard­son, Prof Sarah-Jayne Blake­more, Dr Mairead Mac­Swee­ny, Prof Diana Lau­ril­lard, Prof Brian But­ter­worth, Dr Jenni Rodd, Dr Becky Gilbert, Prof David Shanks, Delia Fuhrman, Jorina von Zim­mer­mann, Jamie Knight and Simon Basher.