Ogi Ogas is an American writer and computational neuroscientist. As of May 2016, he is a visiting scholar at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he serves as Project Head for the Individual Mastery Project.
Early life and education
Ogi Ogas was born and grew up in Annapolis, Maryland.
He attended Severna Park High School, where he was a member of the school's
It's Academic team.
Ogas began a graduate degree in film studies at the University of Iowa in 1994, but left under a cloud after an undergraduate was badly injured while working on a film
project for him. Ogas was awarded a Ph.D. in computational neuroscience by Boston University in 2009.
He was a United States Department of Homeland Security Fellow during his graduate studies.
Career
Ogas is a visiting scholar at the Harvard University School of Education.
Ogas is the Project Head for the Individual Mastery Project in the Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Written works
A Billion Wicked Thoughts
Ogas's nonfiction book
A Billion Wicked Thoughts (2011, with Sai Gaddam) analyzed the sexual terms used in web searches by approximately 100 million internet users.
This is What It Sounds Like
In 2022, W. W. Norton published
This is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You, by Ogas and
Susan Rogers.
Journey of the Mind
In 2022, Ogi Ogas co-authored
Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos with Dr. Sai Gaddam, published by W. W. Norton & Company. The book examines the evolutionary origins of consciousness and cognition, exploring how thinking emerged from simpler biological systems.
Other contributions
Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry
Ogas is listed as a contributor to Jeffrey Lieberman's book
Shrinks.
[Little, Brown and Company, 2015, ][The authorship is listed as "Jeffrey Lieberman, with Ogi Ogas."][Lieberman is former president of the American Psychiatric Association and current chair of the Columbia Department of psychiatry.] As advertising prose from the Hachette Books Group describes it, the book:
Shrinks received a starred review in Kirkus Reviews,
Game show appearances
|
| $1 Million (15 of 15) - No Time Limit |
| Which of these ships was not one of the three taken over by colonists during the Boston Tea Party? |
| • A: Eleanor | • B: Dartmouth |
| • C: Beaver | • D: William |
| Ogas's $1,000,000 question |
Ogas won $500,000 on an episode of
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire that aired on November 8, 2006, using his cognitive science research to guide his game strategy.
Ogas has intimated in interviews that he had a strong hunch about his final question (about the Boston Tea Party, shown), after tentatively eliminating three of the choices; he ultimately decided to walk away because of the large amount of money at risk ($475,000 of his $500,000; a miss would have dropped him back to $25,000). His hunch was correct.
Since playing, he has appeared 22 times as the syndicated show's "Ask The Expert" Lifeline.
Ogas was also a contestant on Grand Slam, which aired in August and September 2007.
External links
