Faculty

Andrew N. Meltzoff holds the Job and Gertrud Tamaki Endowed Chair and is the Co-Director of the University of Washington Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences. A graduate of Harvard University, with a Ph.D. from Oxford University, he is an internationally renowned expert on infant and child development. His discoveries about infant imitation have changed theories about early cognition and developmental cognitive neuroscience. His research on social-emotional development helped shape theories of social cognition and informed education. His research has been central in debates and theories in cognitive science, including for memory development, brain science, especially concerning the common coding for perception and action and the development of neural mirroring mechanisms, and in educational theory and practice regarding how cultural stereotypes and self-concepts influence learning in formal and informal settings.

McCandliss studies developmental cognitive neuroscience, with an emphasis of questions of how the neural substrates of several cognitive abilities change via learning and education. His laboratory employs several diverse techniques to investigate cognitive change across development and learning, including training studies in adults and children, longitudinal research in school-age children, and naturalistic school-based studies observational and intervention studies. Changes in neural structure and function are measured primarily through functional magnetic resonance imaging, diffusion tensor imaging analysis of white matter tract structures, and high-density EEG recordings. Cognitive domains of central interest include reading/language development, numerical/mathematical cognitive development, and domain-general attention abilities.

Charbel N. El-Hani is Professor of History, Philosophy, and Biology Teaching at the Institute of Biology, Federal University of Bahia, Brazil, where he coordinates the History, Philosophy, and Biology Teaching Laboratory. He receives a Productivity Research Grant 1-C of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). He is affiliated with the Graduate Studies Programs in History, Philosophy, and Science Teaching (Federal University of Bahia and State University of de Feira de Santana), in Ecology and Biomonitoring (Federal University of Bahia), and in Genetics (Federal University of Bahia). His research interests are in science education research, philosophy of biology, evolutionary biology and ecology.

I study the core foundations of human cognition through comparative research across human development, across animal species, across cultures, and across levels of analysis. Current projects focus on development of object representations, of number, of geometry, and of social cognition.

Dr. Facundo Manes obtained his medical degree at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina and his Master of Science from the University of Cambridge, England. After completing his residency program in Argentina, he received training in Functional Neuroimaging in the Department of Neuroradiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School (Boston, USA), and completed a fellowship in neuropsychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Iowa (Iowa City, USA), where he was also a neuroanatomy instructor. He also worked as a neurologist and clinical investigator in the Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry, University of Cambridge and is a consultant in Neurology and Neuropsychology in the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Medical Research Council, Cambridge, England. His focus in research comprises the neurobiology of mental processes. Among his contributions, Dr. Manes has identified the prefrontal areas related to the decision-making processes; together with Dr. Calder, he described the neural basis of anger, and the role of the insula in emotional and cognitive processes. Furthermore, he described, for the first time, emotion processing in the minimally conscious state with Dr. Bekinschtein. He developed the first cognitive rehabilitation unit in Latin America using a holistic approach. He is member of the ICD-11 Expert Working Group on the Classification of Neurocognitive Disorders of the World Health Organization. Dr Manes is an author of three books and was co-investigator of the new diagnostic criteria for the behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia and of the new classification of primary progressive aphasia and its variants proposed by international working groups. He is currently the principal investigator or co-principal investigator on several trials evaluating potential new therapies in Alzheimer disease. He created and currently directs the Institute of Cognitive Neurology (INECO) and the Institute of Neurosciences at Favaloro University, both in Buenos Aires, Argentina. These are considered state-of-the-art leading institutions in the field of neurosciences throughout Latin America and have become internationally recognized clinical research centers. He is a professor of Behavioral Neurology and Cognitive Neuroscience at Favaloro University and Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of South Carolina, USA. He is the chair of the Latin American Division of the Society for Social Neuroscience and the president of the World Federation of Neurology’s Research Group on Aphasia and Cognitive Disorders.

I am interested in the physics and neural control of birdsong. Birdsong is a complex behaviour that, for about 40% of the known bird species, involves some form of learning. How do the periphery and the neural circuitry interact in order to give rise to this behaviour? We address this issue by combining physiological measurements of the muscles controlling the vocal organ, electro-physiological measurements of different neural populations of the song motor system, and mathematical modelling.

Isabel Martins holds a degree in Physics from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She taught Physics at a secondary school in Rio de Janeiro before going to the UK where she obtained her PhD in Education at the University of London. She joined the research staff of the Institute of Education, University of London and, later, took up the post of associate professor at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil. She is now associate professor at the Institute of Educational Technology for Health Sciences (NUTES) of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, where she has coordinated the Graduate Studies Programme in Science and Health Education and served as Deputy Director. She is the present president of the Brazilian Science Education Research Association (ABRAPEC) and editor of the electronic journal Ciência em Tela. Current editorial appointments also include membership the Editorial Boards of international journals Science Education, Enseñanza de las Ciencias, Infancia y Aprendizaje, Ciência & Educação and Cultural Studies in Science Education. Her research interests focus on the relationship between language and science education, with particular reference to studies of the processes of production, circulation and reception of discourse in science education and science communication. Recent publications include critiques of scientific literacy, analyses of science textbooks, of the role of images in science education and in scientific communication, and of processes of discursive appropriation of science education research results in educational contexts.

Jan Born is director of the Department of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology at the University of Tübingen, Germany. He obtained Ph.D.s in Psychology and Physiology. After stays as research fellow in the Department of Biological Psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and as a post doc at the Department of Physiology at the University of Ulm, Germany, he was appointed full professor of Physiological Psychology at the University of Bamberg, Germany, in 1989. In 1999, he joined the Department of Neuroendocrinology at the University of Lübeck, and changed in 2010 to his current position. Dr. Born's primary research interests are in the dynamics of memory formation in biological systems. He is particularly interested in the memory functions that sleep serves for the central nervous system, metabolic system and the immune system. He is speaker of the collaborative research center "Plasticity and Sleep", founded in 2005 by the German Science Foundation at the Universities of Lübeck and Kiel, Germany.

Joselina da Silva is PHD in Social Sciences at Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro – UERJ - (2005). She attended the I International Graduate Summer Seminar Interrogating the African Diaspora, at FIU (2004). She teaches Sociology at Universidade Federal do Ceará. She is the founding director of N´BLAC (Núcleo Brasileiro, Latino Americano e Caribenho de Estudos em Relações Raciais, Gênero e Movimentos Sociais). She is also the general coordinator of the Seminar Iniciativas Negras Trocando Experiências (Black Initiatives exchanging experiences) which intends to prepare and qualify theoretical, technical and interdisciplinary students and activists engaged with activities against racial discrimination in the social movement. She was the vice-president of the Brazilian Association of Afro Brazilian Researchers (ABPN / 2006 - 2008). Her research and teaching interests cover the following topics: racial relations, racial inequalities, black movement in Latin America, anti racism, ethnicity, black women and violence against women. For more information go to: http://lattes.cnpq.br/1785433331883652

Judy DeLoache is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia. The primary focus of her research is the emergence and early development of the understanding and use of a variety of symbolic objects, including pictures and models. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois. Professor DeLoache’s research has been funded by an NIH Scientific Merit Award and a grant from NSF. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Psychological Science, and the American Psychological Association. She has been a Visiting Scholar in the Psychology Departments of Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, and New York University, as well as a Fellow in residence at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford and at the Rockefeller Foundation Study Center in Bellagio, Italy. In 2009 she was awarded an Honorary Degree from the University of Basel (Switzerland). She is currently the President of the Cognitive Development Society.

Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek is the Stanley and Debra Lefkowitz Professor in the Department of Psychology at Temple University, where she serves as Director of the Infant Language Laboratory and Co-Founder of CiRCLE (The Center for Re-Imagining Children’'s Learning and Education). She received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Hirsh-Pasek’s research in the areas of early language development, literacy and infant cognition is funded by the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Educational Sciences and the National Institutes of Health and Human Development. She is deeply committed to bridging the gap between research and practice. To that end, she was a researcher on the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, co-developed the language and literacy preschool curricula for the State of California and has consulted with toy companies and media programs like Sesame Workshop. She is the winner of the American Psychological Association (APA) Award for Distinguished Service to psychology and the APA Bronfenbrenner Award for her lifetime contribution to the field.

I am ICREA Professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain. I am interested in reasoning, language learning, imagination of physical events and, in general, in infant cognition. Here are some questions that fascinate me and are at the center of my current research: How do infants know what happens next? What kinds of information they can extract from the environment to anticipate future events? Do they have a sense of what is probable and what is improbable, and where does this sense come from? What is the relation (if any) between infants' abilities to think and language acquisition? At the the RICO Lab (Reasoning and Infant Cognition) we try to make some progress on these issues.

Marcela Peña is Associated Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile and at the Universidad de Chile. Originally she is an MD, Pediatrician and obtained her PhD in Cognitive Science and Psycholinguistic from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France. Her research interest is focused to explore early cognitive development and early learning. Integrating behavioral and neuroimage techniques and methods, she and her team study how the infants and young children learn their native language and develop their mathematical cognition and their symbolic mind. In her studies she includes healthy participants and patients.

Mariano Sigman was born in Argentina and grew up in Barcelona, Spain. He came back to Argentina and got a master degree in physics at the University of Buenos Aires. He moved to New York to do a PhD in neuroscience at the Rockefeller University directed by Charles Gilbert and Marcelo Magnasco. His thesis investigations were focused on visual perception, on the physiology and psychophysics of perceptual learning. He then moved to Paris, to do a postdoc with Stanislas Dehaene on consciousness and cognitive architecture. In 2006 he came back (again) to Argentina, as a professor in the Physics Department, where he currently is the director of the Integrative Neuroscience Laboratory.

Mark McDaniel is currently a Professor of Psychology, with a joint appointment in Education, at Washington University in St. Louis, and is the founding Director of the recently inaugurated Center for Integrative Research on Cognition, Learning, and Education (CIRCLE).
 
Since receiving his Ph.D. from University of Colorado in 1980 (in experimental psychology), he has developed a number of research interests in the general area of human learning and memory, publishing over 200 articles, chapters and edited books. Over the past 25 years he has published numerous papers related to education, including topics such as pre-questions, discovery learning, feedback, mental models, analogical learning, and classroom studies on testing effects. Most recently he has addressed how generative encoding can enhance recall of connected discourse for low-ability readers. Related work includes a series of studies on elaborative study techniques such as elaborative interrogation and enhancing learning through testing (repeated retrieval), with much of this latter work being conducted in actual college and middle school classrooms.
 
A second line of investigation is focusing on the learning processes by which humans abstract relations between continuous inputs and outputs, and the use of analogy in learning scientific concepts.  Much of his current work in this area is examining potential individual differences in tendencies toward rule learning versus exemplar-based representations and how those tendencies persist when learners are faced with authentic educational challenges (e.g., chemistry classes). 
 
A third line involves development of theoretical frameworks and experimental investigation of the different processes (retrieval  dynamics, encoding, influence of reminders) underlying prospective memory. Recent work includes investigation of prospective memory in older adults with very mild Alzheimer Disease (AD) and those genetically disposed to AD. 
 
With Gilles Einstein, McDaniel has coauthored two books entitled Memory Fitness: A Guide for Successful Aging (2004) and Prospective Memory: An Overview and Synthesis of an Emerging Field (2007).  His editorial activities include serving as Associate Editor of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition (1995-2000) and Cognitive Psychology (2003-2009). He is currently on the boards of Educational Psychology Review, the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, and JEP:LMC.

Since 1991 when he received a Ph.D. in psychology from University of Michigan, Robert Goldstone has been a professor in the Psychological and Brain Sciences Department and Cognitive Science Program at Indiana University. His research interests include concept learning and representation, perceptual learning, collective behavior, and computational modeling of human cognition. His interests in education focus on learning and transfer in mathematics and science, computational models of learning, and the design of innovative learning technologies. He was awarded two American Psychological Association (APA) Young Investigator awards in 1995 for articles appearing in Journal of Experimental Psychology, the 1996 Chase Memorial Award for Outstanding Young Researcher in Cognitive Science, a 1997 James McKeen Cattell Sabbatical Award, the 2000 APA Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology in the area of Cognition and Human Learning, and a 2004 Troland research award from the National Academy of Sciences. He was the executive editor of Cognitive Science from 2001-2005, and is currently associate editor of Cognitive Psychology and Topics in Cognitive Science.

Sidarta Ribeiro was born and raised in Brasília, Brazil. He majored in biology at the University of Brasília and got a master degree in neurobiology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He got a Ph.D. at the Rockefeller University and performed post-doctoral work at Duke University. In 2005, he moved to Natal in Brazil to launch the Edmond and Lily Safra International Institute of Neuroscience of Natal (ELS-IINN). Sidarta was the scientific director of the Institute until 2008, when he became full professor of neuroscience at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN). Currently he is the director of the Brain Institute at UFRN. His research deals with sleep & memory as well as animal communication, in models as diverse as mice, rats, lizards, marmosets and humans.

Dr. Silvia Bunge is an Associate Professor with a joint appointment in Psychology and the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California at Berkeley, and an affiliate of the Institute of Human Development. A cognitive neuroscientist by training, she directs the Building Blocks of Cognition Laboratory. The lab conducts research on the neural mechanisms that support development, plasticity, and individual differences in higher cognitive functions.

Susan Fitzpatrick is Vice President with the James S. McDonnell Foundation and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy at Washington University School of Medicine (St. Louis), teaching neuroscience. She received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Neurology from Cornell University Medical College. After 5 years pursuing in vivo NMR spectroscopic studies of brain metabolism in the Department of Molecular Biochemistry and Biophysics at Yale University, Dr. Fitzpatrick shifted her career to non-profit administration. Dr. Fitzpatrick lectures and writes on issues concerning the role of private philanthropy in the support of scientific research, and on issues related to the public understanding of science.

She will give her talk with Tom Wyman: http://www.micds.org/technology

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