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Jiaying Zhao is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia, where she also holds a Canada Research Chair focused on Behavioral Sustainability. She earned her PhD from Princeton University in 2013. Her research addresses financial and environmental sustainability challenges through the application of psychological principles, specifically exploring how resource scarcity affects human cognition and behavior and developing interventions to alleviate cognitive burdens. She promotes actions aimed at climate change through effective behavioral solutions and has been invited as a researcher at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT. Dr. Zhao is a faculty affiliate at the Vancouver School of Economics and the Center for Effective Global Action at the University of California, Berkeley, and participates in various public policy initiatives, including Canada’s Financial Literacy Research Sub-Committee and OECD's International Network on Financial Education. She has received multiple awards, including the King Charles III Coronation Medal in 2025 and the UBC Killam Research Prize in 2020. Currently, she is accepting graduate students.
Offers course-only and thesis routes. Focus areas include philosophy of science, mind, ethics, and Asian philosophy.