January 6, 2021
Susan Fiske chaired her last meeting of the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive and Sensory Services (BBCSS) in November 2020. Dr. Fiske, who had served as the president of FABBS and continues to be the editor of the FABBS journal – Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, had dedicated eleven years of service to the Board, including six years of exceptional leadership as chair. Dr. Fiske was celebrated by the board in a virtual celebration of her service. Dr. Fiske will continue to lend her expertise and wisdom to the National Academies by participating in a new Academies-wide initiative on diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism, chairing the Committee on Understanding the Aging Workforce and Employment at Older Ages.
Dr. Terrie Moffitt, will be the next chair of BBCSS. Moffitt is the Nannerl O. Keohane University Professor of Psychology at Duke University, and Professor of Social Development at King’s College London. Her expertise is in the areas of longitudinal methods, developmental theory, clinical mental health research, neuropsychology, and genomics in behavioral science.
In addition to a new chair, BBCSS will welcome five new members this month.
Richard Aslin is a senior scientist at Haskins Laboratories, senior research scientist, senior lecturer, and clinical professor at the Child Study Center at Yale University. His research has focused on exploring and understanding implicit learning mechanisms.
Ulrich Mayr is Lewis Professor and head of the department of psychology at the University of Oregon. His primary research focus is on the relationship between memory, attention, and cognitive control, both from a general and a developmental/life-span perspective.
Katherine Milkman is the Evan C. Thompson Endowed Term Chair for Excellence in Teaching and professor of operations, information, and decisions at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Her research explores ways that insights from economics and psychology can be used to change consequential behaviors for good, such as savings, exercise, vaccination take-up and discrimination. Dr. Milkman served as the FABBS Council representative for the Society for Judgement and Decision Making.
David Poeppel is a principal investigator at the Max Planck—NYU Center for Language, Music and Emotion (CLaME), director at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, and professor of psychology and neuroscience at New York University. His primary research areas are the brain basis of speech perception and language comprehension, auditory cognition and music, multisensory perception, the temporal structure of perceptual experience, and cognitive neuroscience and its foundations.
Stacey Sinclair is professor of psychology & public affairs, associated faculty of African American studies, and head of Mathey College at Princeton University. Her research examines how interpersonal interactions translate culturally held prejudices into individual thoughts and actions.
Three members have concluded their terms of service on the Board. We cannot thank them enough for their many contributions to the Board, and hope to work with them again on future BBCSS activities.
Nancy Kanwisher (NAS) is the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a founding member of the McGovern Institute at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Thanks to Kanwisher for spearheading discussions on IRB rules related to health-focused agencies.
Bill Maurer is dean of the School of Social Sciences, professor of anthropology, and director of the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion at the University of California, Irvine. Maurer was our anthropologist who told us all we needed to know about money and whose creativity and sense of humor will be missed.
Steven Petersen is professor of radiology; emeritus professor of psychological & brain sciences, biomedical engineering, and neuroscience; and the James S. McDonnell Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in Neurology at Washington University in St. Louis. Petersen showed interest in any topic that arose and volunteered willingly to assist on several projects across a range of topics – a true mark of his intellectual curiosity.
