Jamil Zaki, Ph.D.

Jamil Zaki, Ph.D. (FAN ’19, ’24) is a full Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Laboratory. He and his colleagues study social connection, including empathy, cooperation, and trust, and develop tools to help people connect more effectively.

In 2019, Prof. Zaki published his first book, The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World, which NPR called a “wide-ranging, practical guide to making the world better.” His second book, Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, was published in 2024. Zaki has written about human connection for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, The Harvard Business Review, and The New Yorker. He regularly gives talks and trainings to a range of audiences, including Fortune 500 executives, middle schoolers, healthcare workers, and government officials. His TED and TEDx talks have been viewed over 3,000,000 times.

Zaki received his BA in cognitive neuroscience from Boston University and his Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia University and conducted postdoctoral research at the Harvard Center for Brain Science. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and received about two dozen awards from scientific associations and universities. In 2019 he was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the US Government’s highest honor for researchers at his career stage.