SNE Mid-Career Award Christian Ruff
2025 Winner
Christian Ruff
Professor, Univeristy of Zurich
Christian Ruff is Professor of Neuroeconomics and Decision Neuroscience at the University of Zurich, where he co-directs the Zurich Center for Neuroeconomics, the Laboratory for Social and Neural Systems Research, and the Marlene Porsche Graduate School in Neuroeconomics, the world’s only dedicated PhD program in this area. He studied psychology, cognitive science, and neurobiology in Freiburg and Vancouver before completing a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, where he remained as a senior research fellow until moving to Zurich in 2009.
Christian’s research explores the neurocomputational mechanisms that enable the human brain to select actions in the face of vast and uncertain information from both the environment and internal states. Integrating approaches from economics, psychology, machine learning, and neuroscience, he combines neuroimaging, computational modeling, and causal brain stimulation methods to uncover general principles of decision making across perceptual, value-based, and social domains. His work has shown how processes such as oscillatory evidence accumulation, attentional gain, and efficient coding shape choice behavior, and how risk attitudes emerge from fundamental perceptual inference mechanisms. A complementary research line, supported by an ERC Consolidator Grant, has identified neural circuits causally underpinning uniquely human social behaviors, including honesty, norm compliance, altruism, and moral decision making.
Christian has published more than 120 papers and has authored influential reviews that have shaped the agenda of decision neuroscience. In addition, he has advanced the field by building institutional structures and training programs, mentoring students from over 30 countries, and promoting interdisciplinary dialogue with clinicians, economists, and business leaders.