Hello! My name is Joel Solomons and I’m currently a Teaching and Research Associate at the University of Plymouth, where I’m pursuing my PhD in Psychology. My research primarily focuses on cognitive psychology and perception, exploring the intriguing question of why different individuals perceive the same things differently.

In addition to my research, I’ve been delving into the world of R programming. My journey with R extends beyond statistical analysis, encompassing website development, image manipulation, and even artificial intelligence. I am particularly interested in automation, always looking for ways to make slow research processes more efficient.

My research also extends to Mooney images. Mooney images are two-tone, thresholded, ambiguous images used in various fields, used in psychological research and cyber security, but also can be aesthetically pleasing enough to consider them works of art! As part of my strive to automate as much as possible, I’ve created an R package (mooneyR) to create Mooney images. This has the added benefit of making all my experiments reproducible.

But my interests aren’t confined to academia and programming. I’m also a passionate multi-instrumentalist. My musical journey began with school music lessons, but I quickly ended up at the Royal College of Music’s Junior Department in London, where I studied for eight years. Today, I play a variety of instruments, including the clarinet, saxophone, bass guitar, guitar, and piano. I’m currently part of a sax quartet and have had the pleasure of performing with numerous bands and groups over the years.