159 - Dawn Finzi: From Vision Neuroscience to ML Engineering (Psychologist in the Wild Series)

Stanford Psychology

16 October 2025

Elizabeth chats with Dr. Dawn Finzi, a Machine Learning engineer on the Perception team at Zoox, and a recent alumni of our very own Stanford’s Department of Psychology, as a part of our new Psychologist in the Wild series. During her PhD, Dawn studied the functional organization of the human visual system, focusing on both the structural underpinnings and the overarching computational goals. In this episode, Dawn shares her scientific journey from PhD to industry, and how her PhD experience translates to her current role at Zoox.  If you found this episode interesting at all, subscribe on our Substack and consider leaving us a good rating! It just takes a second but will allow us to reach more people and make them excited about psychology. Dawn’s website: https://www.dawnfinzi.com/ Elizabeth’s: website: imelizabeth.github.io Elizabeth’s BlueSky: @imelizabeth.bsky.social Podcast BlueSky @StanfordPsyPod.bsky.social Podcast Twitter @StanfordPsyPod Podcast Substack https://stanfordpsypod.substack.com/ Let us know what you thought of this episode, or of the podcast! :) stanfordpsychpodcast@gmail.com