About Gorilla

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.

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!

Hannah Spence loves people! Or at least… how people think. Espe­cial­ly people at a safe dis­tance… like through an email.

Hannah com­plet­ed her BSc Psy­chol­o­gy degree at De Mont­fort, with a focus on energy and moti­va­tion reg­u­la­tion, both con­scious and uncon­scious. She is fas­ci­nat­ed by com­mu­ni­ca­tion in every form, from in depth dis­cus­sions to mimicry — some­thing that has driven her work with chil­dren with devel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ties. She strives to improve com­mu­ni­ca­tion in every aspect of her life.

Hannah jumped head-first into Gorilla in 2018, apply­ing her inter­ests to our Support desk. If you’ve sent a support request to Gorilla recent­ly, you’ve prob­a­bly heard from her! Her current aspi­ra­tions involve improv­ing our support service, and plant­i­ng a veg­etable garden.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Jade Pick­er­ing loves research, and the more open and repro­ducible the better! She com­plet­ed her BSc in Psy­chol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lincoln, and 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. Now she wants to help others get the best use out of the plat­form pos­si­ble and encour­age and empower researchers to take their work online.

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.

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.