Peter Battaglia is a research scientist in MIT's Brain and Cognitive Sciences department. He studies how people perceive, reason about, and interact with the physical world. In his research he builds models of the mental computations that support these abilities, and tests them by comparing their predictions against how people behave in realistic experiments. He uses Python to implement these computational models and simulate their predictions, to create the virtual environments used in his experiments, and to analyze his experimental data. He holds a BA in Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and a PhD in Psychology.