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Nikita Mehta is on the Psychology pathway at the University of Birmingham. Nikita undertook a three-month OIV to the lab of Dr Björn Lindström at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden.

Working in the laboratory of Dr. Björn Björn from January 17 to April 15, 2026 , Nikita advanced her doctoral research by acquiring specialized technical expertise, such as "Agent-based modelling" (ABM) , a computational technique used to simulate how individual-level behaviors translate into emergent group dynamics. She applied this framework to simulate human information-seeking tasks within scale-free social networks, examining how uncertainty, social cues, and information valence influence online behavior. By integrating her research with a "social feature learning" model recently developed by the host laboratory , Nikita explored how individual decisions can trigger large-scale information cascades and drive the spread of misinformation on social media platforms.

Beyond her individual project, Nikita fully immersed herself in the academic culture of the Karolinska Institutet by participating in weekly lab meetings, sharing her ongoing research, and engaging in interdisciplinary journal clubs and academic book clubs. Reflecting on the experience, Nikita highlighted the collaborative environment and noted that the visit successfully expanded her professional connections with a leading laboratory in the field.