Sarah R. Allred (they/them) is a writer, teacher, and researcher at Rutgers University-Camden, where they are a Professor in the Department of Psychology and affiliated faculty with the Center for Computational and Integrative Biology (CCIB).  Dr. Allred earned a PhD in Neurobiology and Behavior from the University of Washington-Seattle and a B.S. in Applied Physics from Brigham Young University, and they completed postdoctoral work in psychophysics and computational modeling at the University of Pennsylvania. From 2017-2021, Dr. Allred served consecutively as the Faculty Director and Director of the Senator Walter Rand Institute for Public Affairs at Rutgers University-Camden, and from 2023-2024 they served as the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education for the Rutgers Camden College of Arts & Science.

 

Dr. Allred’s fundamental interest in how the brain sees underlies all their work for both academic and public audiences.  Their research methods include behavioral psychophysics, computational modeling, and quantitative analysis of large secondary data sets.  In research, teaching, and service, Dr. Allred practices their belief that when scholars are in communication with public and community stakeholders as well as other scholars, the end result is both better scholarly work and a better world.

 

 

Because the world is so messy and complicated, and because the sensory signals our brains receive about the world are ambiguous, perceiving the world involves making guesses about the world. Careful experiments reveal that brains employ guessing strategies that are correct on average, even though visual illusions show that our brains can be spectacularly incorrect in given instances (#theDress!). Much of Dr. Allred’s work in this area has involved asking humans (and, formerly, monkeys) to make basic perceptual judgments about stuff (patches of color, lines, photos, painted cubes) while Dr. Allred manipulates the context surrounding that stuff (spatial and temporal context). Dr. Allred’s research team then uses the patterns of people’s behavioral responses to empirically and computationally characterize the brain’s guessing strategies. In their past research, Dr. Allred used basic perceptual tasks to reveal the strategies the brain uses to interpret the external, physical world. In their current research, Dr. Allred is exploring how brains might use these same strategies to interpret their emotional and interior worlds.

 

Scientific truths are different in kind from existential human truths. The question of what biologically defines the existence of a human is a different in kind from the question of what it is like to exist as a human. Still, there is often consonance between scientific truths and human truths, and Dr. Allred’s creative nonfiction explores the curious realms of such consonance. Dr. Allred’s creative nonfiction has been published in the New York Times, and Dr. Allred anticipates completing their MFA in Creative Writing from Bennington Writing Seminars in June, 2026.

 

In the classroom, Dr. Allred combines their scientific expertise with their joy in creative discovery. They teach a variety of graduate and undergraduate courses, including Perception, Physiological Psychology, Statistics, Method and Theory in Psychology, Research Methods, Experimental Psychology, Teaching in Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology, and the following special topics courses: Umwelt: Animal, Vegetable, Mineral; Data-motivated Storytelling; How We Decide; and Psychology, Philosophy and Poetry of Color. Dr. Allred employs a variety of active learning methods, including in-class experiments, problem-solving, and frequent low stakes writing assignments.  Syllabi from Dr. Allred’s Fall 2025 classes can be found here: Umwelt; Physio; Data-motivated Storytelling.

 

Over the years, Dr. Allred has received funding as a principal investigator from a variety of sources, including the National Science Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, New Jersey Health Initiatives, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Inspira Health Network, the South Jersey Health Collaborative, the Rowan-Rutgers Camden Joint Board of Governors and a variety of internal Rutgers funding mechanisms, including funding from the Rutgers COVID-19 Center for Response and Pandemic Preparedness (CCRP2).

 

When not at work, Dr. Allred can most often be found with their three kids, reading, or outside in their rewilded yard.  They enjoy traveling to places with few people and lots of mountains.