Membership of the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences

Chair

Philip E. Rubin is Chief Executive Officer, Vice President and Senior Scientist at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, Connecticut. Dr. Rubin is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Surgery, Otolaryngology at the Yale University School of Medicine and a research affiliate in the Department of Psychology. Dr. Rubin’s research concerns articulatory synthesis (computational modeling of the physiology and acoustics of speech production), sinewave synthesis, signal processing, perceptual organization, and theoretical approaches and modeling of complex temporal events. From 2000 through 2003, Dr. Rubin served as the Director of the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences at the National Science Foundation. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Acoustical Society of America, the American Psychological Association, and the Association for Psychological Science. Dr. Rubin served as a member of the NSTC Interagency Working Group on Social and Behavioral and Economic Sciences Task Force on Anti-Terrorism Research and Development. He is also the Chairman of the Board of the Discovery Museum and Planetarium in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Members

Linda Bartoshuk (NAS) is a presidential endowed professor of community dentistry and behavioral sciences in the College of Dentistry of the University of Florida. She completed her Ph.D. at Brown University. Dr. Bartoshuk, an internationally known researcher in the chemical senses of taste and smell, is also a visiting professor in the College of Public Health and Health Professions. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the only female NAS member at the University of Florida. Dr. Bartoshuk's research, which explores the genetic variations in taste perception and how taste perception affects overall health, will complement care provided through the UF McKnight Brain Institute's Center for Taste and Smell, housed in the College of Dentistry. Dr. Bartoshuk was the first to discover that burning mouth syndrome, a condition predominantly experienced by postmenopausal women, is caused by damage to the taste buds at the front of the tongue and is not a psychosomatic condition, as many believed. Center experts treat patients suffering from smell and taste disorders or loss of taste due to disease or cancer therapy.

Susan E. Carey (NAS) is Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. Dr. Carey's research probes the nature and development of human knowledge. It has scientifically defined the concepts that organize children's and adults' understanding of number, biology, and the material world. Her experiments illuminate how thought and language develop spontaneously. This knowledge has helped educators to improve the way that science and mathematics are taught. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2002, to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001, and to the National Academy of Education in 1999. She was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, a Guggenheim Fellow, and winner of the Nicod Prize in 1998. Dr. Carey has served on two NRC committees on learning and instruction.

Martin Fishbein is the Harry C. Coles Jr. Distinguished Professor in Communication, and director of the health communication program in the Public Policy Center of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Developer of the theory of reasoned action, Dr. Fishbein has contributed over 200 articles and chapters to professional books and journals, and has authored or edited six books. Dr. Fishbein’s research interests include attitude theory and measurement, communication and persuasion, behavioral prediction and change, intervention development, implementation and evaluation, studies of the relations among beliefs, attitudes, intentions and behaviors in field and laboratory settings including studies of the effectiveness of health-related behavior change interventions. He has been president of both the Society for Consumer Psychology (Division 23 of the APA) and the Interamerican Psychological Society.

Lila R. Gleitman (NAS) is Professor of Psychology and Linguistics and co-director of the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Gleitman’s main research concerns the architecture and semantic content of the mental lexicon, i.e., the psychological representation of the forms and meanings of words. Another major interest is in how children acquire both the lexicon and the syntactic structure of their native tongue. Dr. Gleitman has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 2000 and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1999. She is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Cognitive Science Society. Dr. Gleitman is a member of the NSF’s Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Advisory Committee. She is co-editor of the MIT Press Series: Language, Development and Conceptual Change, and is on the editorial board of many other journals and book series.

Arie W. Kruglanski is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland and a co-director of the Center of Excellence for Research on the Behavioral and Social Aspects of Terrorism and Counterterrorism. His research is focused on social goals, psychological stability and change, accuracy and bias in social perception, minority influence, and decision-making under pressure. Dr. Kruglanski’s interests have centered on how people form judgments, beliefs, impressions and attitudes and what consequences this has for their interpersonal relations, their interaction in groups, and their feelings about various "out groups." He has been awarded numerous grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, and has served as a reviewer of grants for both institutions. He has been editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and is currently associate editor of the American Psychologist. He also serves on the editorial boards of several other journals. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society. He was a member of the NRC Committee on Science and Technology for Countering Terrorism: Panel on Behavioral, Social, and Institutional Issues.

Richard E. Nisbett (NAS) is Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan and co-director of the Culture and Cognition Program there. Dr. Nisbett’s research interests have focused primarily on how laypeople reason and make inferences about the world. His earlier work was concerned with inductive inference, causal reasoning and covariation detection. More recent work on reasoning compares East Asians with Westerners. He has also studied "cultures of honor" and the Hispanic cultural tradition of sympatia, and the ways in which it differs from mainstream American culture. Dr. Nisbett was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2002 and became a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992. He was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002. His book The Geography of Thought won the American Psychological Association’s William James Book Award in 2004.

Valerie F. Reyna is Professor in the Department of Human Development at Cornell University. Dr. Reyna’s research focuses on dual processes in memory, judgment, and decision making, on how these processes change with age and expertise, and on their implications for risky decision making in law, health, and medicine. She is also an expert on false memory. She is co-developer of fuzzy-trace theory, a theory of memory and its relation to higher cognitive processes. Dr. Reyna is on the editorial boards of a half-dozen journals in the fields of child development and memory and has reviewed grants for the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She has published three books and many dozen book chapters and journal articles. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychological Society. She was also elected to Sigma Xi and the Psychonomic Society.

Lisa M. Savage is Associate Professor of Psychology at the State University of New York, Binghamton. She is also the director of graduate studies for the department and behavioral neuroscience area head. Dr. Savage conducts research on the neurobiology of memory and the development of psychological and pharmacological therapeutics for the treatment of memory disorders. Using drugs, diet, neurotoxins, and aged rodents, Dr. Savage models human amnesia (i.e., Wernicke-Korsakoff's disease, alcohol-induced dementia, and Alzheimer's disease). Behavior of the whole organism is assessed before and after brain damage, and the extent of brain pathology is correlated with behavioral impairment. Dr. Savage was given the American Psychological Association’s Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contribution to Psychology in the area of animal learning and behavior in 2002. She recently received a major grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for work on amnesia and acetylcholine dysfunction. She reviews grants for the National Science Foundation and is a reviewer for a dozen neuroscience and psychological research journals.

Brian A. Wandell (NAS) is the first Isaac and Madeline Stein Family Professor at Stanford University, where he has been since 1979. His research includes image system engineering and visual neuroscience. Dr. Wandell founded the University’s Image Systems Engineering Program. As part of this research, Dr. Wandell and his team study and build devices used for digital imaging, including image sensors, high dynamic range displays, and software simulations of the digital imaging pipeline. He has led classes on color science and computer applications for engineers and managers from more than 200 companies. In addition to numerous scientific articles, Dr. Wandell is the author of the vision science textbook Foundations of Vision. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Vision, the Journal of Neuroscience, and Neural Networks. He has served as a consultant and technical advisor for a number of corporations and has patented some of the products of his work. In 1986, he won the Troland Research Award from the National Academy of Sciences for his work in color vision. He was elected a Fellow of the Optical Society of America in 1990; in 1997, he became a McKnight Senior Investigator and received the Edridge-Green Medal in Ophthalmology for work in visual neuroscience. In 2000, he was awarded the Macbeth Prize from the Inter-Society Color Council. Dr. Wandell was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2003.

J. Frank Yates is Professor of Marketing and Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. Dr. Yates current research activity includes judgment and decision processes (including special emphases on cross-cultural variations), decision aiding, judgment analysis and applications of cognitive psychology. Dr. Yates has been a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a National Science Foundation Fellow, University of Michigan Distinguished Service Award winner, Fellow of the American Psychological Association, Honorable Mention Teaching Award winner, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, Charter Fellow of the American Psychological Society, Senior Fellow of the Michigan Society of Fellows, and Perrin Faculty Award winner. Dr. Yates has held positions at Rice University, Peking University, and the University of Leiden, and has published widely.

Dr. Barbara Wanchisen –Director

National Research Council

Dr. Wanchisen received a B.A. in English and Philosophy from Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania and an M.A. in English from Villanova University. She received her Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Temple University in 1986 under the direction of Philip N. Hineline. She is a long-standing member of the Psychonomic Society the Association for Behavior Analysis, and the American Psychological Association. In January 2004, she became a Fellow of Division 25 (Behavior Analysis) of the American Psychological Association. She has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior and The Behavior Analyst while also serving as a guest reviewer of a number of other journals. From 2001 until April 2008, Wanchisen was the executive director of the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological, & Cognitive Sciences in Washington, DC. In 2004, she was instrumental in the founding of the Federation's Foundation for the Advancement of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, a non-profit organization that assumed the educational mission of the Federation. Previously, Wanchisen was Professor in the Department of Psychology and Director of the collegewide Honors Program at Baldwin-Wallace College, near Cleveland, Ohio.