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).
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Loves learning new things! Driven by curiosity and a thirst for problem solving, Marie enjoys combining data, user perspectives and business strategy to design and then implement features that help customers achieve their goals.
Marie has rejoined Gorilla as a UX Engineer in the development team, having been the company's second employee back in 2017. She focuses on making the product both powerful and user-friendly for all our researchers. She is excited to apply what she's learnt about design, analytics and engineering to continue making Gorilla the best online platform for behavioural research.
Is our #socialbutterfly! Her day is filled with running Gorilla’s social media platforms and all things Comms! With a degree in English Literature, Hollie loves creative writing, content creation and professional puns.
She also supports Jemma on the operations side of the business and planning fun activities for the team offsite. Out of office, you will find her on a run, in a restaurant, up a mountain, or whizzing down a rollercoaster!
Joined Gorilla in March 2024 as a data scientist. He holds a degree and a Masters in Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience. Before Gorilla, he spent a year in China teaching English — a wonderful experience! — and four years as a research associate, writing code to process data and develop research data pipelines. It's this experience working with data processing, combined with his interest in applied statistics, that he has brought to Gorilla to ensure the product's development and the company's direction is always aligned with the needs and behaviour of our users.
He's also interested in machine learning, and generally tinkering around with various programming languages and technologies; beyond that he enjoys playing the guitar (JS Bach being a favorite), a little piano, running, walks in the countryside, learning Mandarin, and most importantly, spending time with his beautiful daughter, Beatrix.
Loves building experiments and delving into the intricacies of research. With a BSc in Mathematics and Linguistics and an MSc in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of York, her academic journey ignited a passion for innovative research and methodological designs. Now, she is writing up her PhD on the impact of number word morpho-syntactic congruency on numerical cognition.
Katie’s PhD experience has fostered a deep love for problem-solving and teaching others how to conduct transparent and rigorous research. At Gorilla, she channels this enthusiasm into providing support and developing materials to help users seamlessly bring their studies online.
Tom Palmer is passionate about research, and fascinated by personality variables and how learning happens.
Tom completed his MSc Psychology degree at the University of Surrey, with his dissertation exploring the relationship between anxiety and learning a language. His background is in trauma-informed therapy, supporting SEN students that experienced Adverse Childhood Experiences.
At Gorilla, Tom is part of the Sales Development Team. In his free time, he enjoys playing sport and meditating.
Imogen has continued to have a keen interest in psychology even after completing her studies, namely in maternal mental health and the impact this has on childhood development.
Imogen completed her MSc Clinical Psychology degree in 2019 and went on to support students with learning difficulties as a Learning Support Assistant at Guildford College and then to work as part of the NHS Berkshire CAMHS department supporting the team with the triaging process.
At Gorilla, Imogen is part of the Sales Development Team. In her free time she enjoys playing videogames and creating art!
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.