Mariia (Mary) Krasnikova

Mariia (Mary) Krasnikova is a researcher, founder, and creative practitioner whose work sits at the intersection of neuroscience, perception, and experiential design. Having lived and studied across Russia, Switzerland, France, and the United States, she has built an unusually international and interdisciplinary trajectory shaped by a recurring question: why can the same environment produce entirely different experiences in different people?

She is the founder of CERE.lab, an independent neuroscience research initiative based in San Francisco. CERE explores multisensory perception through experimental environments that combine perception science, creative practice, and behavioral research.

Her move into neuroscience followed a nontraditional path. Originally trained in luxury hospitality management and finance in Switzerland, she became increasingly interested in the mechanisms behind human experience rather than experience design alone. That shift began with her undergraduate research on the neuropsychology of multisensory dining and developed into a broader focus on perception, cognition, and sensory processing.

Her achievements span academic, entrepreneurial, and leadership settings: she was an absolute winner of the National Science Olympiad, an EMCup vice-champion, winner of the FCSI Student Challenge, held student-government president role, was invited to Eta Sigma Delta Honour Society and completed additional business education through Harvard Business School Online.

Today, Mary is intentionally crossing disciplines and professional identities, building a research profile that connects neuroscience with the environments people move through every day. At the center of her work is one question: how does the external world become an internal experience?