Joseph Z. Stafura, Ph.D.

I'm a cognitive psychologist and data scientist with a career built at the intersection of rigorous measurement, applied statistics, and real organizational problems. My PhD training at the University of Pittsburgh concentrated in cognitive neuroscience — with a focus on the cognitive processes underlying language comprehension, memory, and reading. That foundation shapes everything I do: I care about how things actually work, not just whether they appear to work.

After graduate school, I co-founded Affective Health, a digital assessment and behavior change platform that grew to serve 16,000+ users across academic and applied settings. The platform drew directly on Ecological Momentary Assessment methodology developed in Saul Shiffman's lab at Pitt — capturing experience closer to when it happens rather than relying on recall. That work produced measurable outcomes: 15–16% improvements in key performance constructs, across more than 20 client engagements totaling over $1M in projects.

I currently manage research administration for the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh — a $50M+ portfolio of grants from NIH, NSF, IES, DOD, and major private foundations. The work demands the same thing the rest of my career has: translating complex, multi-stakeholder data into decisions that hold up under scrutiny.

My independent research lab — JAB Lab — is where I pursue projects that don't fit neatly into any one job description: D3 visualizations, AI hallucination studies, violence research dashboards, and whatever else I'm currently obsessed with.