Brief CV

For a full copy of my CV, please contact me via email:

Wenbo YI

Education

• Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology: McGill University, Montreal, 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, 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, Beijing, China (2019–2020, incomplete)
  • GPA: 3.86/4.0
• B.A. in Sound Recording: Nanjing University of the Arts, Nanjing, China (2015–2019)
  • GPA: 89.5/100

Research 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 Neuro Lab, 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

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

Media Coverage

• How songs may help reduce pain - and even treat stroke symptoms, National Geographic (August 2026)
• Can the tempo of music change how we feel pain?, McGill Media Relations (March 2026)
• 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. (2026). Individual Differences in Behavioral, Physiological, and Neural Entrainment during Auditory Perception and Production. Concordia University, Department of Psychology, Montreal, Canada. Invited Talk.
• Yi, W., & Palmer, C. (2026). Inter-brain dynamics track interpersonal respiration and individual differences. S4SN 2026, Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Neuroscience, Montreal, Canada.
• 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

• Co-supervision of honors research projects (2022–2026): 6 students
• Teaching Assistant:
  PSYC213: Cognition (Fall, 2026)
  PSYC305: Statistics for Experimental Design (Summer, 2026)
  PSYC315: Computational Psychology (Winter, 2026)
  PSYC100: Introduction to Psychology (Fall, 2025)
  PSYC212: Perception (Winter, 2025)
  PSYC306: Research Methods in Psychology (Fall, 2024)
  PSYC339: Introduction to Applied Psychology (Fall, 2024)
  PSYC337: Introduction to Psychopathology (Summer, 2024)
  PSYC212: Perception (Winter, 2024)
  PSYC352: Research Methods and Laboratory in Cognitive Psychology (Fall, 2023)

Updated: Aug 2026