Tom Beckers

In this episode, my guest is Prof. Tom Beckers. He is a professor of psychology at KU Leuven. His work focuses on the role of learning and memory in psychopathology, especially anxiety, addiction, and ADHD. As you will hear in the interview, he often emphasizes reflecting on one’s values when doing science and making those values a priority. He is passionate about his work and a really good communicator of it. I hope you’ll enjoy this episode as much as I did!

If you’re interested in specific parts, you can skip to them directly here:

01:00 Years in academia

01:20 Did you choose academia or did academia choose you? Neither.

06:10 Journey in his research field

8:30 Current research questions

13:00 New directions: Pavlovian compensation

17:30 Inspirations when doing research and finding new research questions

19:30 The biggest changes in academia: the good and the bad

25:30 Advice for young scientists

27:00 People in academia that he looks up to

28:00 Importance of “no egos” in science

32:50 Typical week of an academic

36:40 Four Loko Effect