I received my PhD in Social/Personality Psychology with a minor in Quantitative Methods from the University of British Columbia. From 2023 to 2026, I served as an Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). Beginning in Fall 2026, I will join the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Texas A&M University as an assistant professor.

My research explores the fundamental building blocks of human communication by examining how nonverbal behaviors – particularly movements of the body, head, and face–communicate social rank, emotion, personality, and mental health. My work integrates social, cognitive, and affective science with advanced quantitative and computational methods to uncover the nonverbal cues and visual mechanisms that guide social perception and social interaction.

A core priority of my research is ensuring the generalizability of my findings across populations and ages. To do this, I recruit participants from diverse regions spanning 6 continents, members of an isolated small-scale indigenous society with minimal exposure to the Western world (the Mayangna), and children as young as two years old. These efforts have yielded impactful, multidisciplinary collaborations demonstrating that many aspects of nonverbal communication are broadly shared across cultures and emerge early in development.

My work has been published in leading journals such as Psychological Science, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and PNAS Nexus, and is currently supported by a Grant from the University of Amsterdam’s Data Science Center and the Australian Research Council.

I will be recruiting graduate students this year.  Priority will be given to graduate student applicants with a strong research record. Ideal applicants will be interested in studying nonverbal communication, emotion, leadership, and/or social perception, and have experience using R and/or Python.

To learn more about my research, see www.ZakWitkower.com

When I’m not working, you can find me traveling, playing padel, refining my automated stock trading algorithm, or recording jazz on the trumpet and piano. I also enjoys when participants provide funny responses to open-ended questions — here’s my favorite: