Our People:  Faculty 

• Faculty Steering Committee
  This committee is made up  faculty members from each of our participating departments.  They oversee the program and can offer advice on our minor and how it relates to the major in their respective departments.
• Faculty In Cognitive Science
  These are the faculty who participate in our program, including those who teach in our core courses and mentor Cognitive Science senior theses.  You will find links for each, where you can learn about their research.

Graduate Students          Undergraduate Students          Alumni

Faculty Steering Committee

Josef Rauschecker, Dept of Physiology and Biophysics,  Director, rauschej@georgetown.edu

Wayne A. Davis, Dept of Philosophy, davisw@georgetown.edu

Janet Mann, Dept of Biology, mannj2@georgetown.edu

Rhonda Friedman, Dept of Neurology, friedmar@georgetown.edu

Darlene V. Howard, Dept of Psychology, howardd@georgetown.edu

Paul Kainen, Dept of Mathematics, kainen@georgetown.edu

Mark Maloof, Dept of Computer Science, maloofm@georgetown.edu 

Jeffrey Urbach, Dept of Physics, urbachj@georgetown.edu           

Elizabeth Zsiga, Dept of Linguistics, zsigae@georgetown.edu

Faculty in Cognitive Science

Paul Aisen, Dept of Neurology, psa@georgetown.edu. Trained as a rheumatologist, his research interest focuses on inflammatory mechanisms in the brain, and the development of new treatment strategies for neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease.

Rachel Barr, Dept of Psychology, rfb5@georgetown.edu. A developmental psychologist whose research focuses on understanding the learning and memory mechanisms that development during infancy.

Heidi Byrnes, Dept of German, byrnesh@georgetown.edu. Her research, scholarship, and teaching focus on adult instructed second language acquisition, particularly at the very advanced level.

Sandra L. Calvert, Dept of Psychology, calverts@georgetown.edu. Her research activities involve the impact of information technologies such as television and computers on children's attention, comprehension, and social behavior.

Wayne A. Davis, Dept of Philosophy, davisw@georgetown.edu. His research interests are centered in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, epistemology, and logic, and are focused mainly on the nature of mental states (particularly belief, desire, and thought) and the concept of meaning.

Douglas A. Eagles, Dept of Biology, eaglesd@georgetown.edu. He is an expert in neurophysiology, particularly understanding the mechanisms of seizure generation and in seizure protection.

Guinevere Eden, Dept of Pediatrics; edeng@georgetown.edu. Her focus is in the field of neuroscience, particularly developmental dyslexia. Her work has focused on characterizing visual processing in individuals with and without dyslexia using fMRI and extending this approach to other sensory domains, such as sensorimotor control.

Alan I. Faden, Dept of Neuroscience; fadena@georgetown.edu. His research addresses pathobiological mechanisms of neuronal cell death at the molecular and cellular levels.

Rhonda Friedman, Dept of Neurology;  friedmar@georgetown.edu. Her research focuses on deficits in language and cognition in adult neurologic patients with stroke, head injury and dementia.

Karen N. Gale, Dept of Pharmacology, galek@georgetown.edu. Her areas of expertise include Glutamate and GABA-mediated influences on epileptic seizures and memory.

H. Romano Harre, Dept of Psychology, harre@georgetown.edu. His areas of developing linkages between descriptive psychology, artificial intelligence modeling and neuroscience.

Patrick A. Heelan, Dept of Philosophy, heelanp@georgetown.edu. His research interests are interdisciplinary with a concentration on the philosophy of modern physics with a novel approach from the perspective of phenomenology and hermeneutics.

Elena Herburger, Dept of Spanish and Portuguese, herburge@georgetown.edu.

Darlene V. Howard, Dept of Psychology, howardd@georgetown.edu. Her research investigates which cognitive and neural systems decline, and which are spared, in the course of aging.

Paul Kainen, Dept of Mathematics, kainen@georgetown.edu. His research interests include topology and geometry of nonlinear approximation (especially in regard to neural networks), theoretical biology (i.e., mathematical notions that may be somehow relevant), and quantum computation and graph theory.

Jagmeet S. Kanwal, Dept of Physiology & Biophysics, kanwalj@georgetown.edu. His studies the functional organization of the brain and neural coding of sensory information.

Steve Kuhn, Dept of Philosophy, kuhns@georgetown.edu. His research interests include logic, philosophy of logic, ethics, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language.

Donna Lardiere, Dept of Linguistics, lardiere@georgetown.edu. His research interests inclue language acquisition, second language acquisition, morphological and syntactic theory, and developmental linguistics.

Ronald P. Leow, Dept of Spanish & Portuguese, leowr@georgetown.edu. His research interests include: teacher education, SLA, psycholinguistics, attention and awareness, technology and L2 learning, reading.

David Lightfoot, Dept of Linguistics & Dean of the Graduate School, lightd@georgetown.edu. His research interests include syntactic theory, language acquisition and historical change.

Alison Mackey, Dept of Linguistics, mackeya@georgetown.edu. Her major research interests include: second language acquisition, in particular, input and interaction, the roles of attention and working memory in second language development; and second language research methodology.

Ludise Malkova, Dept of Pharmacology, malkoval@georgetown.edu.

Mark Maloof, Dept of Computer Science, maloofm@georgetown.edu. His research interests include machine learning, data mining, on-line learning algorithms, concept drift, adaptive software systems, and applications of machine learning and data mining to computer security.

Janet Mann, Depts of Psychology and Biology, mannj2@georgetown.edu. Her main interests are in ethological methods, mother-infant relationships and infant development in cetaceans and primates, evolution, and behavioral ecology.

Fathali M. Moghaddam, Dept of Psychology, moghaddf@georgetown.edu. He is is an expert on culture and intergroup conflict, with particular focus on the psychology of globalization, radicalization, and terrorism.

Joseph H. Neale, Dept of Biology, nealej@georgetown.edu. His research focuses on neurobiology.

Paul Portner, Dept of Linguistics, portnerp@georgetown.edu. His reasearch covers Semantics, Pragmatics, and the Syntax/Semantics Interface.

Karl Pribram, Distinguished Research Professor in Psychology & Cognitive Science, pribramk@georgetown.edu.

Craig Ramey, Distinguished Professor of Health Studies, ctr5@georgetown.edu. He specializes in the study of factors affecting young children's development of intelligence, social competence and academic achievement.

Sharon L. Ramey, Susan H. Mayer Professor of Child and Family Studies, sr222@georgetown.edu. Her professional interests include the study of the development of intelligence and children's competency, early experience and early intervention, the changing American family, and the transition to school.

Josef Rauschecker, Dept of Physiology & Biophysics;  rauschej@georgetown.edu. He is interested in the functional organization and plasticity of the cerebral cortex.

Maximilian Riesenhuber, Dept of Neuroscience, mr287@georgetown.edu. He is interested in computational models, psychophysics and fMRI of high level vision, in particular object recognition, object representation, and attention.

Cristina Sanz, Dept of Spanish & Portuguese, sanzc@georgetown.edu. She is an expert on the acquisition of second languages and a linguist with expertise in bilingualism as it relates to cognition, under social sciences.

Pamela A. Saunders, Dept of Neurology, saunderp@georgetown.edu. She studies communication, aging and Alzheimer's disease and has authored several articles dealing with doctor/patient communication in the older patient population.

Barbara Schwartz, Dept of Psychiatry, schwarbl@georgetown.edu.

Joseph W. Serene, Dept of Physics, serenej@georgetown.edu. His research focuses on the theory of strongly-correlated fermions.

Michael Ullman, Dept of Neuroscience, michael@georgetown.edu. He investigates the neural and psychological bases of language, and the relation between language, memory and motor functions.    

Jeffrey Urbach, Dept of Physics, urbachj@georgetown.edu. His research involves novel dynamical phenomena in physical systems, and most of his research involves imaging of one form or another.

Chandan J. Vaidya, Dept of Psychology, cjv2@georgetown.edu. Her research focuses on understanding the cognitive and neural underpinnings of memory and cognitive control.

Mahe Velauthapillai, Dept of Computer Science, velauthm@georgetown.edu.

Wilfried Ver Eecke, Dept of Philosophy, vereeckw@georgetown.edu. His research interests include (1) Hegel; (2) philosophy of psychoanalysis with an emphasis on Lacan -- including ethical problems with the treatment of mentally ill persons; (3) ethics and economics -- including public policy implications; (4) Contemporary Continental philosophy; (5) the concept of person; and (6) political and social philosophy -- including distributive justice.

Benjamin Walker, Dept of Psychology, walkerbr@georgetown.edu. He is an expert in control of seizures and seizure behaviors via brain stem structure.

Raffaella Zanuttini, Dept of Linguistics, zanuttir@georgetown.edu. Her main research interests are in syntactic theory and the syntax-semantics interface.

Elizabeth Zsiga, Dept of Linguistics, zsigae@georgetown.edu. Her research interests include phonological theory, second language phonology, phonetics (especially articulatory), speech synthesis, and the phonology/phonetics interface.

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