Aaron Fisher is an Associate Professor of Psychology and the director of the Idiographic Dynamics Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his PhD from the Pennsylvania State University in 2012 and joined the Department of Psychology at UC Berkeley in 2013 after a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University.

Dr. Fisher’s research seeks to measure, model, and understand dynamic processes in individual behavior and health.

Curriculum Vitae

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Peter Soyster earned his PhD in 2025. He is currently a Staff Scientist at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Peter’s work in the lab asked whether it is possible to accurately predict when someone will use a drug, hours before they use it? If so, could such knowledge be used to improve treatments for substance use disorders? Peter’s research employs idiographic methods to understand substance use dynamics and predict future use at an individual level. Specifically, he is interested in understanding how biological, psychological, and social factors contribute to momentary decisions to use tobacco and alcohol. In his free time, Peter enjoys playing bass guitar and wrestling with his cat. 

Open Science Framework

Esther Howe earned her PhD in 2025. After spending a year as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Washington, Esther joined Anthropic as Policy Design Manager in User Well-Being. During her time in the lab, Esther's research aimed to understand the impact of sexual assault on  mental health. Can we use data collected in the acute post-trauma period  (one-month post-assault) to predict long-term PTSD outcomes? Could  these same post-assault data also shed light on developmental  trajectories of PTSD? Esther aims to answer these questions by examining  within-person symptom dynamics during the acute post-trauma period, and  identifying group-level patterns of these dynamics. She is particularly  interested in understanding how social reactions to sexual assault  survivors contribute to PTSD development, and in incorporating passive  measurement of physiology and social context into her work. She sees her  current research as an important first step towards the development of  empirically-based momentary interventions that prevent PTSD.

Jiyoung Song earned his PhD in 2026. He is currently a postdoctoral research fellow in the FAST Lab at the Stanford School of Medicine. His research aims to leverage intensive longitudinal methods to investigate sleep’s role as a transdiagnostic mechanism in precipitating and perpetuating psychopathology in the psychosocial context of minority stressors and resilience. He is also interested in studying how to best disseminate evidence-based treatments to community health clinics outside of research settings. In his free time, you will often find him hiking in the woods with his dog, Bucky.