Dean of the Graduate School
Prof. Idris Komnenos
Dean of the Veyra Graduate School since 2020. Cognitive neuroscientist and educator. Responsible for graduate admissions, curriculum, and researcher development across all five divisions.
Biography
Idris Komnenos is a cognitive neuroscientist whose research examines how the brain encodes relational structure and how those encoding strategies constrain the acquisition of new knowledge. He joined Veyra in 2013 as a senior researcher in the Cognitive & Neural Science division, where he worked closely with the Computational Neuroscience Group and the Perception & Decision Lab before taking up the Dean's role in 2020. His laboratory used a combination of behavioral paradigms and functional imaging to study schema-based learning and categorical inference in humans.
Before Veyra, Komnenos held a faculty position at the Dorneaux Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, where he ran the Relational Cognition Laboratory for seven years. He completed his doctorate at the University of Ostfeld on the representation of abstract semantic relations in frontoparietal cortex, followed by postdoctoral training at the Reinholt Center for Computational Brain Research. He is a recipient of the Brecklund Foundation Prize in Cognitive Science and the Veyra Distinguished Mentorship Award (2019).
As Dean, Komnenos oversees all aspects of the Graduate School: admissions for the PhD and MSc programs, curriculum design, doctoral supervision standards, and the professional-development program for graduate students. He introduced the cross-divisional seminar requirement and the supervisory-committee format that replaced single-supervisor doctoral oversight in 2021. He also chairs the Graduate Studies Committee and serves on the Institute's Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Working Group.
Research and educational interests
Selected publications and career highlights
- Schema-mediated encoding in hippocampal–prefrontal circuits: dissociating rapid assimilation from incremental learning
- Abstract relational structure in frontoparietal cortex: evidence from representational similarity analysis
- The supervisory committee model in multidisciplinary research institutes: outcomes and design principles
- Brecklund Foundation Prize lecture: What does it mean to learn a structure?
- Veyra Graduate School admissions guide and fellowship handbook
- Cross-divisional doctoral education: measuring breadth outcomes in a specialist research institute
Graduate School under his leadership
Supervisory committee model
Introduced in 2021, the committee model requires each PhD student to have a principal supervisor and at least two committee members from outside the primary group. Annual reviews are formal and documented.
Cross-divisional seminars
All graduate students are required to attend the monthly cross-divisional research seminar, which rotates through divisions and is organized by the student representatives' committee.
Researcher development program
A structured program of workshops — scientific writing, data management, public engagement, career planning — runs throughout the academic year. Completion is recorded in students' institutional records.
Current students
Komnenos continues to co-supervise doctoral students in the Cognitive & Neural Science division, in collaboration with Prof. Hana Okoro and Dr. Roald Steiner. His current doctoral students are working on schema-guided memory consolidation, relational reasoning in artificial neural networks, and the neural correlates of scientific conceptual change.
Students interested in working with Komnenos should contact him directly at idris.komnenos@veyra.example before making a formal application. He welcomes inquiries from candidates with backgrounds in cognitive neuroscience, experimental psychology, and computational modeling of cognition.