Vani Pillay is a South African-Dutch behavioural scientist, with a specialty in attention and music. She has obtained a Bachelor of Science in Cognitive Neuroscience and Molecular Cell Biology from University College Utrecht, as well as a Master of Science in Applied Cognitive Psychology from Utrecht University. Within these degrees, both of her theses revolved around the effect of sound on the brain. After exploring marketing consultancy at ZAM and event management at Honeypot, she spent the last 2 years working as a Behavioural Research and Insights Analyst at Edelman DataXIntelligence (DXI). She is currently doing her PhD at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, where she is part of the Music360 EU project, examining what the behavioural and economic effect of background music is on consumers in a retail environment.