Professional Background

2024 – Present
I am currently a Senior Scientist at HumRRO, the Human Resources Research Organization, based in Alexandria, Virginia. I perform a variety of client-facing and internal duties at HumRRO related to personnel selection and assessment. My current responsibilities capitalize on my background in data science, statistics, software programming, cognitive psychology, team management, and client development. In 2024, I was named an APS Rising Star and elected as a Fellow of the Psychonomic Society.

2020 – 2024
Prior to joining HumRRO, I was a Research Scientist and Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Georgia Tech, working in Dr. Randy Engle’s Attention & Working Memory Laboratory. I authored several successful grant proposals at Georgia Tech, including a $7.5 million MURI grant (co-PI), a $1 million ARI grant (co-PI), several DURIP equipment grants, and an APF Visionary Grant for research on reducing adverse impact in high-stakes cognitive tests. I also taught Cognitive Psychology at the graduate level and General Psychology at the undergraduate level. With respect to service, I helped lead the Research Faculty Advisory Council, which advocated for the rights of postdocs and research scientists, and I served as the Research Faculty Liaison for the School of Psychology.

2015 – 2019
I earned my PhD in Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience from Michigan State University, studying with Dr. Zach Hambrick. During my time in graduate school, I helped found the Expertise Lab and managed a large team of research assistants on grant-funded data collection projects. This work culminated in several publications in high-impact journals and popular press outlets (e.g., The New York Times, Scientific American, Psychological Science). Together with Dr. Hambrick and Dr. Campitelli, we designed and published the Journal of Expertise, an open-science journal dedicated to publishing original scholarship in the area of expertise and expert performance. I currently serve as webmaster and Associate Editor for the journal.

Brief Life Story

Born in 1992, I grew up in Beverly Hills, Michigan with my mom (Tova Shaban), dad (Robert Burgoyne), and older brother (Brian Burgoyne). My mom is an attorney and shareholder specializing in commercial litigation, and my dad is a writer and film professor who focuses on theory and representation of history in film. My brother and I attended Detroit Country Day High School; we were both left-footed soccer players and right-handed musicians. I started learning piano around age 6 when my mom began taking lessons, and picked up guitar, bass, euphonium, and drums in the years that followed. I played drums in a funk/jam band with my brother called The Blue Effect for around 10 years, from high school through college. After earning my degrees, I moved to Atlanta to pursue a postdoc with Randy Engle, a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In Atlanta, I met my wife Lillie, an incredible singer and distance runner with a PhD in toxicology. We spent most of the pandemic playing music together and going for long runs, and were married on October 22, 2022. Our reception was held at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. In 2024, Lillie and I moved to Alexandria, Virginia to follow our careers. Lillie is now a Toxicologist working for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and I am working as a Senior Scientist at HumRRO.