Jan R. Wessel, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and the Department of Neurology. He received his Ph.D. in 2011 from the Max Planck Institute for Neurological Research, where he was a Gertrud Reemtsma Fellow and received a Young Researcher Award from the Gustav A. Lienert Foundation. Dr. Wessel then worked as a Post-Doc and Independent Investigator at the University of California, San Diego. His research examines the neural mechanisms that underlie flexible behavior and cognition, and how pathological processes, brain lesions, and normal and abnormal aging affect these mechanisms. Specifically, Dr. Wessel is concerned with how humans carry out and maintain goal-directed behaviors, and how they use their cognitive systems to resolve challenges to this goal (such as action errors or unexpected events). Ultimately, his research is aimed at increasing and augmenting the capacity for such self-controlled behaviors in both health and disease.