Curriculum Vitae

Wenbo YI

Education

• Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology: McGill University, Canada (2022–2027 expected)
  • Advisor: Dr. Caroline Palmer
  • Committee: Dr. Mathieu Roy, Dr. Signy Sheldon
  • GPA: 4.0/4.0
• M.Phil. in Music Technology: University of Oslo, Norway (2020–2022)
  • Advisors: Dr. Alexander Refsum Jensenius and Dr. Simon Høffding
  • Thesis: When Hearts Beat as One – Cardiac Dynamics and Synchrony in String Quartet Performances
  • GPA: 3.88/4.0
• M.A. in Sound Recording: Communication University of China, China (2019-2020, incomplete)
  • GPA: 3.86/4.0
• B.A. in Sound Recording: Nanjing University of the Arts, China (2015-2019)
  • GPA: 89.5/100, Rank 1/21

Experience

• Ph.D. Researcher, Sequence Production Lab, Department of Psychology, McGill University, Canada, ongoing
• Research Intern, Biomedical Data Intelligence Team, National Research Council, Canada, 2023
• Guest Researcher, FRONT Neurolab, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Norway, 2022-2024
• Research Assistant, RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion, Oslo, Norway, 2020-2022

Selected Honors and Awards

• Quebec Science Top 10 Discoveries of the Year (10 découvertes de l’année), 2026
• Fonds de recherche du Québec Nature et technologies Doctoral Fellowship, 2025-2028
• McGill GREATE Travel Award, 2025
• Wolfe Fellowship, 2024
• Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music Graduate Student Award, 2024
• NSERC-CREATE Graduate Award in Complex Dynamics, 2022-2024
• Graduate Excellence Award, 2022-2024
• Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music Travel Award, 2024
• Best Poster Award, Symposium in Nonlinear Dynamics, 2023
• Academic Excellence Scholarship, 2020
• China National Scholarship, 2017
• First-Class Academic Scholarship, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019
• TongXi Scholarship, 2016
• First Prize, Second YAMAHA China National Piano Competition, 2016

Media Coverage

• Four McGill studies make Québec Science’s list of the top 10 discoveries of the year, McGill Reporter (January 2026)
• Atténuer la douleur par le tempo musical, Québec Science (January 2026)
• Finding the right tempo for pain relief, Canadian Institutes of Health Research (July 2025)
• When using music to alleviate pain, tempo matters, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (February 2025)
• Listening to music can reduce pain for patients who suffer from injury, research shows, Daily Mail (February 2025)
• Music Tempo a Factor in Pain Reduction, Pain Medicine News (March 2025)
• Music with this personal characteristic could relieve pain, New York Post (February 2025)
• Music Tempo for Pain Reduction, Clinical Pain Advisor (February 2025)
• Music synchronized to internal rhythms could lead to better pain relief, CityNews Montreal (February 2025)
• New Study Reveals How Music Eases Pain—But Only at the Right Tempo, The Debrief (February 2025)
• Scientists have found that music eases pain best when it matches our natural rhythm, BBC Classical Music (February 2025)
• When using music to alleviate pain, tempo matters, McGill Newsroom (February 2025)

Talks & Posters

• Yi, W., & Palmer, C. (2025). Testing causal relations between behavioral and physiological dynamics during interpersonal coordination. Meeting of the Society for Psychophysiological Research, Montreal.
• Yi, W., & Palmer, C. (2025). Testing causal relations between physiological and behavioral synchrony in musical dyads. Joint Action Meeting, Turin, Italy.
• Yi, W., Palmer, C. (2025). Causal Relations Between Behavioral and Physiological Dynamics in Interpersonal Coordination, New England Sequencing & Timing Conference 2025, Connecticut, USA.
• Yi, W., Palmer, C., Roy, M. (2024). Individual endogenous rhythms maximize music-induced pain reduction. Society for Music Perception and Cognition Conference 2024, Banff, Canada.
• Yi, W., Palmer, C., Roy, M. (2024). Individual endogenous rhythms maximize music-induced pain reduction. The Neurosciences and Music Conference, Helsinki, Finland.
• Yi, W., Palmer, C., Roy, M. (2024). Individual endogenous rhythms maximize music-induced pain reduction. CRBLM Conference, Montreal, Canada.
• Ferris, C., Scheurich, R., Yi, W., Palmer, C., Sheldon, S. (2024). Dissociable neural mechanisms for encoding of memories associated with conceptual and visual-perceptual detail. CRBLM Conference, Montreal, Canada.
• Ferris, C., Scheurich, R., Yi, W., Palmer, C., Sheldon, S. (2024). Dissociable neural mechanisms for encoding of memories associated with conceptual and visual-perceptual detail. Cognitive Neuroscience Society Conference, Toronto, Canada.
• Yi, W., Palmer, C., Roy, M. (2023). Effects of musical tempo and individual differences on pain perception. Entrainment Workshop, RITMO, University of Oslo, Norway.
• Yi, W., Palmer, C., Roy, M. (2023). Effects of musical tempo and spontaneous rates on pain perception. NSERC-CREATE Symposium in Nonlinear Dynamics, Montreal, Canada.
• Bishop, L., Høffding, S., Yi, W., Laeng, B. (2022). Eyes and hearts of adepts and experts: Physiological rhythms in string quartets. Conference on Music and Eye-tracking, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt, Germany.
• Yi, W. (2021). A pilot study of expressive body movement on audio parameters of piano performances. The 2nd Nordic Sound and Music Computing Conference, Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Teaching Experience

• Teaching Assistant for PSYC315: Computational Psychology (Winter, 2026)
• Teaching Assistant for PSYC100: Introduction to Psychology (Fall, 2025)
• Teaching Assistant for PSYC212: Perception (Winter, 2025)
• Teaching Assistant for PSYC306: Research Methods in Psychology (Fall, 2024)
• Teaching Assistant for PSYC339: Intro to Applied Psychology (Fall, 2024)
• Teaching Assistant for PSYC337: Introduction to Psychopathology (Summer, 2024)
• Teaching Assistant for PSYC212: Perception (Winter, 2024)
• Teaching Assistant for PSYC352: Research Methods and Laboratory in Cognitive Psychology (Fall, 2023)
• Honors research project co-supervision (2022-2026): 6 students

Updated: Jan 2026