Yuan Chang (YC) Leong is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, where he leads the Computational Affective and Social Neuroscience Laboratory. Your research focuses on how our goals, needs, and desires affect our perception of the physical and social world. This suggests that emotion may help encode memories by bringing different brain systems into a more coordinated state as an experience unfolds. Members of Computational Social and Affective Neuroscience Lab (CASNL), past and present, gather during the 2025 Social and Affective Neuroscience Annual Meeting in Chicago. My research is situated at the intersection of social and affective neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, affective science, social psychology, and cognitive science.