Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences

John Anderson received his B.A. from the University of British Columbia in 1968 and his Ph.D. from Stanford University 1972. He has been at Carnegie Mellon University since 1978 where he is the Richard King Mellon Professor of Psychology and Computer Science. He has served as president of the Cognitive Science Society, and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. He is the current editor of Psychological Review. He has received numerous scientific awards including the American Psychological Association's Distinguished Scientific Career Award, the David E. Rumelhart Prize for Contributions to the Formal Analysis of Human Cognition, the inaugural Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Cognitive Science, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science.

He is known for developing ACT-R, which is the most widely used cognitive architecture in cognitive science. Anderson was also an early leader in research on intelligent tutoring systems. Computer systems based on his cognitive tutors currently teach mathematics to over 500,000 children in American schools. He has published a number of books including Human Associative Memory (1973 with Gordon Bower), Language, Memory, and Thought (1976), The Architecture of Cognition (1983), The Adaptive Character of Thought (1990), Rules of the Mind (1993), The Atomic Components of Thought (1998 with Christian Lebiere), and How Can the Human Mind Occur in the Physical Universe? (2007). His current research interest is focused on combining cognitive modeling and brain imaging to understand the processes of mathematical learning.

I am an Assistant Professor at the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy and Technology at Carnegie Mellon University. I hold a BA in Journalism and Mass Communication from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (2002), an MA in Political Science from the University of Chile (2007), and an MA and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh (2015). Before coming to the US, I worked at the international desks of the newspapers El Mercurio (Chile, 2002-2008) and ABC (Spain, 2008).

Jay Aronson is the founder and director of the Center for Human Rights Science at Carnegie Mellon University.
He is also a Professor of Science, Technology, and Society in the History Department. Aronson’s research and teaching examine the interactions of science, technology, law, media, and human rights in a variety of contexts.
Aronson received his Ph.D. in the History of Science and Technology from the University of Minnesota and was both a pre- and postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. His work is funded by generous grants from the MacArthur Foundation, the Oak Foundation, and the Open Society Foundations.

I was previously a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Statistics at the University of California, Berkeley, working with Martin Wainwright and Bin Yu. Prior to that, I was a Ph.D. student in the Language Technologies Institute (a part of the School of Computer Science) at Carnegie Mellon University, advised by Jaime Carbonell. As a graduate student, I was the recipient of a Gates Foundation Fellowship to study interactions between human and HIV proteins, and a recipient of a Richard King Mellon Fellowship for outstanding research in the life sciences.

David L Barack is a philosopher and neuroscientist.

As a philosopher, Dr. Barack’s work focuses on the theoretical and conceptual foundations of cognitive neuroscience and artificial intelligence, the basis of cognition in neurodynamical systems, and the role of search in inquiry.

As a neuroscientist, Dr. Barack investigates the neural circuits and computations that govern foraging decisions for different resources, how foragers use information to learn about their environments, and how decisions to exploit known resources or explore for new ones are made.

I joined Carnegie Mellon’s Statistics and Data Science Department as an assistant teaching professor in 2019. Before that, I received my PhD in Statistics at Harvard University, where I was advised by Tirthankar Dasgupta and Luke Miratrix. As a graduate student, I received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to study the design and analysis of complex experiments and observational studies. At this point my bio becomes somewhat repetitive: I did my undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon from 2010 to 2014, where I received a B.S. in Economics and Statistics and a B.A. in Professional Writing.

Ronald J. and Mary Ann Zdrojkowski Professor of Developmental Neuroscience, Associate Professor of Psychology

I am interested in the origins of human concepts, both in terms of how concepts have evolved over millions of years and in terms of how human concepts develop over an individual lifespan. My research domains include numerical cognition, magnitude estimation, the alphabet, and everyday concepts such as 'face' and 'shoe'. I use fMRI and behavioral measures to study the cognitive and brain mechanisms involved in conceptual processing in pre-school children, non-human primates, and human adults. Using this comparative approach, we can identify both the shared and unique brain functions underlying conceptual knowledge across species and stages of development—with the goal of understanding the structure of the human mind.

Sharon Carver, Ph.D., is beginning her twenty-seventh year as the Director of the Children's School. She earned an A.B. in Psychology and completed the K-12 Biology Teacher Certification Program at Princeton University and then earned a Ph.D. in child development at Carnegie Mellon. She taught in the Graduate School of Education and the Department of Psychology at the University of Rochester for five years before returning to Carnegie Mellon.

Since coming to the Children's School, Sharon has worked with educators to strengthen our school's programs, integrate the school more fully into the university, and build strong connections between laboratory schools in Pittsburgh and beyond. In 2004, Dr. Carver was promoted to full teaching professor, and she was reappointed in 2008 and again in 2013 for additional terms. She is the Associate Training Director for the graduate Program in Interdisciplinary Education Research (PIER), for which she teaches the educational design core course. In 2019, Dr. Carver was appointed as the Associate Dean for Educational Affairs for the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Nationally, she was a panel member for the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Early Mathematics Practice Guide (2013), and she now serves on the Advisory Team for the “Bridging Research and Practice” features in Exchange Magazine for early childhood professionals. Sharon’s husband, Dave, is pastor of the First United Presbyterian Church of Crafton Heights.

Sharon enjoys photography, hospitality, boating on Pittsburgh's three rivers, and traveling. She also spends some of her free time in Southeastern Ohio with daughter Ariel, her partner Drew, and their daughters, Violet and Lucia, who will be turning 2 and 6 this fall.

Gretchen Chapman has been a Professor in Social & Decision Sciences since 2017. Prior to joining the faculty at CMU, Dr. Chapman was a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University where she served as Department Chair of Psychology and Acting Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Science. She is the recipient of an APA early career award and a NJ Psychological Association Distinguished Research Award, a fellow of APA and APS. She is a former senior editor at Psychological Science, a past president of the Society for Judgment & Decision Making, the author of more than 100 journal articles, and the recipient of 20 years of continuous external funding.

I am an assistant teaching professor in the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy and Technology at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). I previously served as a research coordinator and post-doctoral fellow at CMU. In AY 2020-21, I was a non-resident post-doctoral fellow with the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict.

I hold a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University (2017), an M.P.P. from the University of Michigan (2008), and a B.A. in Political Science and Chinese from the University of Notre Dame (2006). Prior to my doctoral studies, I worked as an international affairs analyst at the Congressional Budget Office (2008-2010). I also have prior policy experience at the Rand Corporation, U.S. Treasury Department, U.S. State Department, and Atlantic Council of the United States.

I am broadly interested in understanding the mechanisms underlying the development and maintenance of addiction, as well as identifying those who may be particularly vulnerable to addiction. More specifically, my research focuses on uncovering basic affective and cognitive mechanisms of cigarette craving and alcohol use, and emphasizes the importance of social and biological/personality factors in the etiology and maintenance of alcohol and tobacco use disorders. I use experimental methodologies, including in vivo smoking cue exposure paradigms and alcohol administration protocols, which allow for precise observations of social and emotional processing under conditions modeling real-world contexts that challenge successful self-regulation (e.g., while participants are intoxicated or experiencing strong cravings). I also use longitudinal designs with large clinical samples to specify the mechanisms by which individuals fail to self-regulate and to identify individuals at risk to develop addiction. This information not only can inform the prevention and treatment of addictive disorders, but it also offers insights into basic aspects of human emotion and social functioning.

Simon DeDeo is an Assistant Professor in Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He was previously affiliated with Complex Systems and the Cognitive Science Program at Indiana University.

BARUCH FISCHHOFF is Howard Heinz University Professor, Department of Engineering and Public Policy and the Institute for Politics and Strategy, Carnegie Mellon University. A graduate of the Detroit Public Schools, he holds a BS (mathematics, psychology) from Wayne State University and a PhD (psychology) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the National Academy of Medicine and has served on many NAS/NRC/NAM committees. He is past President of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making and of the Society for Risk Analysis. He has chaired the Food and Drug Administration Risk Communication Advisory Committee and been a member of the Eugene (Oregon) Commission on the Rights of Women, the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Advisory Committee and the Environmental Protection Agency Scientific Advisory Board, where he chaired the Homeland Security Advisory Committee. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, the Society of Experimental Psychologists, and the Society for Risk Analysis. His books include Acceptable Risk, Risk: A Very Short Introduction, Judgment and Decision Making, A Two-State Solution in the Middle East, Counting Civilian Casualties, and Communicating Risks and Benefits. He has co-chaired three National Academy Sackler Colloquia on the Science of Science Communication

I received an A.B. in physics from the University of California in 1989, and a Ph.D. in astronomy and astrophysics from the University of Chicago in 1997. Prior to working at Carnegie Mellon, I was a scientific programmer for the Chandra X-ray Telescope mission, specializing in the development and integration of advanced data analysis methods. I have been at CMU since 2004, working closely with faculty and students at both CMU and Pitt on astronomical data analysis problems.

I am a professor and chair of the Department of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University. After earning a Ph.D. in statistics at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1994, I came to Carnegie Mellon. My research focuses on high-dimensional and nonparametric inference problems, especially related to complex scientific questions. My applied work covers a range of scientific areas, including cosmology, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology. I am leading a project to develop a system for inferring students learning state (at a skill-by-skill level) from rich on-line learning data. A more recent project with researchers at Magee-Womens Hospital will develop novel methods for predicting placental and fetal health from trace signals measured during pregnancy.

Russell Golman is an Assistant Professor of Behavioral Economics and Decision Sciences in the Social & Decision Sciences Department at CMU. His pioneering, interdisciplinary work has been published in a wide range of academic journals, including Science Advances, Decision, the RAND Journal of Economics, the Journal of Economic Theory, the Journal of Economic Perspectives, and the Journal of Economic Literature. In 2017 Professor Golman organized the Belief-Based Utility Conference at Carnegie Mellon with generous funding from the Russell Sloan Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

My area of expertise is 20th-21st century Latin American cultural studies, focusing on the analysis of countercultural expressions as they are represented in literature, film, popular music, and comics and graphic novels. My interests also include the cycles of political violence and impunity in 20th century Latin American history as presented in its literature and popular culture. I have co-edited and published introductions and essays in the first volumes to bring together critical perspectives on the literary production of Colombian writers Andrés Caicedo and Evelio Rosero. I have also authored a number of articles on the tropes of death, suicide, and self-destruction in Caicedo and other Latin American writers, and analyses of the independent films of Luis Ospina and Carlos Mayolo, among others. Being a native Spanish speaker and a near-native speaker of Portuguese, I bring an integrated approach to the study of Latin American literature and culture into my research and teaching. I am currently pursuing a research project on Hispanic and Latino comics and graphic novels as they are slowly being incorporated into literary and cultural studies courses at the university level in the US and Latin America, with an interest in what this may indicate about the current agency and place of comics and graphic novels within the local academic, social, and cultural structures. My Latin American Comics Archive (LACA) was awarded "Best Formative Initiative Developed in 2018" by the Hispanic Digital Humanities organization.

As a teacher in Hispanic studies, my primary goals are to lead students towards a critical awareness and appreciation of the diverse body of cultural products which characterizes the Hispanic world, and to use literature, film, and popular culture to think critically about the cultural and historical constructions of our own and others’ understandings. I teach undergraduate courses at all levels, including some covering both the Spanish-speaking Latin American and Peninsular regions.

I am the faculty advisor for the Minor in Hispanic Studies at CMU. I created and lead for several years the Modern Languages’ Informal Conversations on Teaching and Learning, monthly exchanges devoted to informal explorations of topics connected to the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). I also co-created and co-direct the Hispanic Studies Outreach Program, El Círculo Juvenil, with the purpose of helping immigrant Hispanic/Latina(o) children in Pittsburgh maintain and develop their Spanish language and heritage, as well as increase their familiarity with technology, at the same time as they rapidly absorb the language and culture of their new place in the US. In addition, I have served as a Review Editor for Revista Iberoamericana and Revista de Estudios Colombianos, as Treasurer for the Asociación de Colombianistas, and as Latin American Popular Culture chair for the Midwest Popular Culture Association.

Cleotilde (Coty) Gonzalez is a Full Tenured Professor of Decision Sciences, the Founding Director of the Dynamic Decision Making Laboratory (DDMLab), and the Research Co-Director of the NSF National Institute for AI for Societal Decision Making (AI-SDM) at Carnegie Mellon University. Coty's main affiliation is with the Department of Social and Decision Sciences (SDS). She is also affiliated to the Security and Privacy Institute (CyLab), the Societal Computing program in the Software and Societal Systems Department (S3D), the Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) in the School of Computer Science at CMU; and with the Center for Behavioral Decision Research (CBDR), the Center for Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC) and other units at Carnegie Mellon University.

 

Coty is a 2024 AAAS Fellow and the 15th faculty member from Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences to be elected a fellow of AAAS. Coty is also a lifetime Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. She is also a member of the Governing Board of the Cognitive Science Society, a Member at Large of the Policy Council of the System Dynamics Society, and a Committee member of the National Academies Division Committee for the Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education (DBASSE). Coty is Senior Editor for Topics in Cognitive Science, Consulting Editor for Decision, Consulting Editor for Psychological Review, and Associate Editor for the System Dynamics Review. She is also a member of multiple other editorial boards including: Cognitive Science, Perspectives on Psychological Science, and others.

 

My first book, Socialist Heritage: The Politics of Past and Place in Romania (Indiana University Press, 2019) explores the fraught relationship between heritage-making and statecraft. Focusing on Romania from 1945 to 2016, I analyze the socialist state’s attempt to create its own heritage, as well as the legacy of that project. Contrary to arguments that the socialist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe aimed to erase the pre-war history of the socialist cities, I show that the communist state in Romania sought to exploit the past for its own benefit.

The book traces the transformation of a central district of Bucharest, the Old Town, from a socially and ethnically diverse place in the early 20th century, into an epitome of national history under socialism, and then, starting in the 2000s, into the historic center of a European capital. Under socialism, politicians and professionals used the district’s historic buildings, especially the ruins of a medieval palace that archeologists discovered in the 1950s, to emphasize the city’s Romanian past and erase its ethnically diverse history. Since the collapse of socialism, the cultural and economic value of the Old Town has become highly contested. Bucharest’s middle class has regarded the district as a site of tempting transgressions. Its poor residents have decried their semi-decrepit homes, while entrepreneurs and politicians have viewed it as a source of easy money.

Such arguments point to negotiations about the meanings of class, political participation, and ethnic and economic belonging in postsocialist Romania—a country with a rising social polarization, and whose citizens have lost their trust in the government. An archival and ethnographic research of the changing meanings of the Old Town reveals the fundamentally dual nature of heritage: behind every search for the essence of an idealized past lie strategies of differentiation that can lead to further marginalization and exclusion.

My second book manuscript in progress draws on my research interest in the relationship between politics and materiality to inquire into the Europeanization of ethnicity through memory-work and property restitution in Transylvania.

I earned my Ph.D. in biostatistics from the University of Michigan in 1983, after which I came to the Department of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University as a post-doctoral fellow. I have been a professor here since 1995, during which I also served as Associate Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences for five years. I have served on data and safety monitoring boards and scientific advisory committees for a number of National Insitutes of Health and Veterans Administration studies; and have served on several National Academy of Sciences’ committees, including the Committee on National Statistics. I am a fellow of the American Statistical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. My awards include CMU’s Ryan Teaching Award for Effectiveness in Teaching Undergraduate Students, and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences' E. Dunlop Smith Award for Distinguished Teaching and Educational Service.