Penn Arts and Sciences Psychologists Honored

Sharon Thompson-Schill, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor and Chair of Psychology, and Michael Kahana, Professor of Psychology, have been awarded the inaugural Psychonomic Society Mid-Career Award. The Psychonomic Society, recognized as the preeminent society for the experimental study of cognition, gives the award for exceptional contributions to the field of experimental and cognitive psychology and related areas. Thompson-Schill studies the biological bases of human cognitive systems, while Kahana studies human memory and its neural mechanisms, with a current focus on developing technologies to restore memory function in people who suffer from memory loss due to disease or traumatic injury.

In addition, Martha Farah, Walter H. Annenberg Professor in the Natural Sciences and Director of the Center for Neuroscience and Society, has been made a Fellow of the prestigious British Academy. She is among 76 distinguished scholars to be elected to the Academy in recognition of work in the field of cognitive neuroscience. Farah’s research focuses on the interface between neuroscience and society, socioeconomic status and its relation to brain development, and implications of neuroscience for law education and other policy areas. The British Academy is a community of over 1,400 of the leading minds that make up the U.K.’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. Past Fellows include Winston Churchill and C.S. Lewis.