Tali Sharot

Tali Sharot is an Israeli, British, and American neuroscientist and professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London and MIT. Sharot is known for her research on the neural basis of emotion, decision making and optimism. Sharot hopes to better understand these processes to enhance overall well-being.

Early life and career Tali Sharot grew up in Israel with an English father and an Israeli mother. In school, she was taught in Hebrew, but spoke both English and Hebrew at home. Sharot began studying at Tel Aviv University, receiving a B.A. in economics in 1999, and an M.A. in psychology from New York University in 2002. She received her Ph.D. in psychology and neuroscience from New York University.

Scientific contributions Sharot is especially known for her discovery of the neural underpinnings of human optimism, work that has been published in numerous eminent journals. In her books The Optimism Bias and The Science of Optimism, she describes the evolutionary benefits of unrealistic optimism along with its dangers. Richard Stengel has written in a Time editorial that Sharot's work gives us a better grip on how we function in reality. The implications of Sharot's discoveries for health, finance, cyber security, policy and more have been extensively covered by the media and she is often featured on radio, TV and in the written press. It was selected as a Best Book of 2017 by Forbes, The Times UK, The Huffington Post, Bloomberg, Greater Good Magazine, Inc., Stanford Business School among others. Sharot was one of the presenters on the Dara Ó Briain's Science Club, who also introduced her on stage at The Royal Albert Hall's Imagining the future of Medicine in 2014. She was a speaker at TED2012.

Affective Brain Lab Directed by Tali Sharot, the Affective Brain Lab is a neuroscience and psychology based lab that studies the experience of emotion on normal cognitive function and its causative effects in regards to common mental disorders. The lab combines neural imaging techniques, pharmacological manipulation, and genetic principles to perform experiments on human behavior and neurological mechanisms. Real world application of this lab's research aims to combat the detrimental effects of brain dysfunction.

Awards and recognition Sharot received prestigious fellowships from the Wellcome Trust, the Forum of European Philosophy and the British Academy. She won the British Psychological Society Book award for 2014 (for The Optimism Bias) and 2018 (for The Influential Mind). She has been described as "one of the top female scientists in her country" listed as one of the 15 exemplary female Israeli-born scientists alive. Her two TED talks have been viewed a total of 15 million times.

Publications Books