Daniel B. Berch

Daniel B. Berch is a cognitive and developmental psychologist who received his Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from the University of Michigan, his Master’s degree in Special Education from Michigan State University, and his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of New Mexico. He has spent the preponderance of his academic career at the University of Cincinnati in the Department of Psychology, where he also served as Director of Research for the department, Chair of the University’s Institutional Review Board, and Research Coordinator at the University Affiliated Cincinnati Center for Developmental Disorders. He has published articles and book chapters on developmental changes in short-term memory, numerical cognition, mathematical learning disabilities, spatial information processing, sustained attention, and cognitive processing dysfunctions in Turner syndrome. Dr. Berch came to the Washington area in 1997 to serve as an SRCD/AAAS Executive Branch Science Policy Fellow in the Child Development and Behavior Branch at the NICHD, where he spearheaded the formation of a programmatic funding initiative concerning the development of mathematical thinking and learning. He then did a stint at NIH’s Center for Scientific Review in the Biobehavioral and Social Sciences Integrated Review Group, following which he spent a year at the U. S. Department of Education serving as Senior Research Associate in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement. Among other responsibilities, he advised the Assistant Secretary on technical and policy matters pertaining to educational research. He subsequently returned to the NIH, where he served as Chief of the Cognitive Aging Section in the Behavioral and Social Research Program at the National Institute on Aging. One of his major responsibilities was supervising completion of the nation’s largest study of cognitive training, a multi-site randomized clinical trial testing the effectiveness of several targeted interventions designed to maintain and improve thinking abilities of older adults with respect to their daily functioning. Most recently, he came back to NICHD to direct a new program in Mathematics and Science Cognition and Learning, where he also serves as the Institute’s representative to Secretary Paige’s Mathematics and Science Initiative and the NICHD team leader for the Interagency Education Research Initiative.