Dr. Eric-Jan Wagenmakers is a distinguished mathematical psychologist and leading authority in Bayesian methodology whose work has transformed statistical practice in the social sciences. He currently serves as Full Professor of Bayesian Methodology at the University of Amsterdam's Department of Psychology, a position he has held since 2025 with an appointment extending through 2030. After earning his doctorate from the University of Amsterdam in 2001, he established himself as a prominent figure in mathematical psychology with successive prestigious research grants including Vidi, Vici, and ERC Advanced awards. His career trajectory includes significant appointments as Honorary Professor of Formal Models in Cognitive Science at the University of Groningen from 2012 to 2016 and continuous leadership within Amsterdam's Psychological Methods Unit since 2003.
Professor Wagenmakers has pioneered transformative approaches to Bayesian inference that have fundamentally reshaped statistical practice across psychology and related disciplines, with his scholarly work accumulating over 91,000 citations as documented in Google Scholar. As the driving force behind the development of JASP, a groundbreaking open-source statistical software program, he has provided researchers worldwide with accessible tools for Bayesian hypothesis testing that address critical limitations of traditional frequentist methods. His rigorous scholarship on cognitive modeling and the philosophy of science has established new standards for methodological rigor, particularly in his influential contributions to understanding and resolving the replication crisis that has affected psychological research. The practical impact of his work extends beyond academia, with JASP now widely adopted in educational settings and research institutions globally as a standard platform for transparent, reproducible statistical analysis.
Beyond his research achievements, Dr. Wagenmakers has significantly shaped his field through dedicated mentorship, having supervised numerous doctoral students and co-developing influential educational programs including courses on Bayesian inference and Good Research Practices. His leadership in promoting methodological reform earned recognition with the 2024 Ig Nobel Probability Prize for collaborative research demonstrating that coin flips tend to land on the same side as they started, based on over 350,000 experiments. Currently directing multiple major research initiatives including an ABC Talent Grant project on Bayesian hypothesis tests for lesion studies, he continues to advance the frontier of statistical methodology while maintaining active roles in professional societies as a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. Professor Wagenmakers' ongoing commitment to developing innovative, rigorous statistical approaches ensures his continued influence on the future of scientific methodology across disciplines.
