Cognitive Science at Johns Hopkins University

Postdoctoral fellow Zhenan Shao received a best poster award at JHU's 2026 Women in Data Science % AI Symposium! 🎉

https://cogsci.jhu.edu/2026/04/22/celebrating-women-in-data-science-ai-zhenan-shao-earns-best-poster-award/

Celebrating Women in Data Science & AI: Zhenan Shao Earns a Best Poster Award | Cognitive Science Zhenan Shao, a postdoctoral fellow in the Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab led by Dr. Leyla Isik, received a Best Poster Award at the 2026 Celebrating Women in Data Science and AI Symposium, an event dedicated to amplifying the research and voices of women in the rapidly evolving AI and data...

John Hale is named a Mercator Fellow on a German Research Foundation grant led by Lars Meyer at the Max Planck Institute. The international project investigates the neurobiology of language using magnetoencephalography and interpretable, LLM-inspired language technologies to help us better understand how the brain subserves human language. 🧠💬



Read More: https://cogsci.jhu.edu/2026/04/08/new-grant-for-investigating-the-neurobiology-of-language

New grant for investigating the neurobiology of language | Cognitive Science John Hale, professor and chair of the Department of Cognitive Science, has been named a Mercator Fellow on a three-year grant from the German Research Foundation investigating the neurobiology of language. The grant, titled “Understanding the Cross-linguistic Brain Basis of Sentence Processing thr...

The Johns Hopkins Department of Cognitive Science is seeking exceptional scholars for two tenured/tenure-track faculty positions, one each in High-Level Vision and Language.
✅ Priority Deadline: January 15, 2026
👉 Learn more here: https://cogsci.jhu.edu/2025/12/11/hiring-faculty-in-high-level-vision-and-language/

Hiring Faculty in High-Level Vision and Language | Cognitive Science We seek faculty candidates for two tenured/tenure-track positions: one in high-level vision and one in language. Applications will be considered until the positions are filled. Priorities will be given to applications received by January 15, 2026. We anticipate hiring at the Associate Professor or P...

📣Seeking motivated students interested in joining our PhD program. Our program trains a new generation of cognitive scientists who can meld multiple existing disciplines into a genuinely integrated science of the mind and brain.

Applications are due December 1.
Application Mentoring requests are due November 15.

Learn more here: https://cogsci.jhu.edu/2025/10/17/recruiting-phd-students-applications-due-dec-1/

Recruiting PhD Students: Applications Due Dec. 1 | Cognitive Science We are seeking motivated students interested in joining our PhD program in Cognitive Science. This program trains a new generation of cognitive scientists who can meld multiple existing disciplines into a genuinely integrated science of the mind and brain. Applications are due December 1, 2025. Admi...

🎉 Prof. Mick Bonner received a Humboldt Research Fellowship to collaborate with the University of Giessen on vision research—an exciting recognition of his global impact in cognitive science! 🧠


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International Recognition for Prof. Bonner’s Work on Human Vision | Cognitive Science We’re excited to share that Prof. Mick Bonner received a Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation! This prestigious fellowship enables experienced researchers to pursue independent research in collaboration with a host institution of their...

🎉 Congrats to recent alum Dr. Emalie McMahon, who received a Glushko Dissertation Prize for her contributions to research on social interaction perception in the human mind and brain. Her innovative work explores the neural basis of social scene processing. 👏

Alum Honored with Glushko Dissertation Prize | Cognitive Science Dr. Emalie McMahon, a recent graduate of our PhD program, received the prestigious Glushko Dissertation Prize from the Cognitive Science Society. This esteemed prize recognizes young researchers who have made significant contributions to the field of cognitive science through their groundbreaking re...

Exciting News! 🎉Dr. Brenda Rapp has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the UCLouvain in Belgium! 🏅 Her groundbreaking research in reading science and cognitive disorders has made a significant impact worldwide. 🌍

Join us in congratulating Dr. Rapp on this well-deserved honor! 👏

Dr. Brenda Rapp Honored by UCLouvain | Cognitive Science On April 8, 2025, Dr. Brenda Rapp was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. This prestigious recognition highlights Dr. Rapp's significant contributions to the field of reading science and the impact it has had on an international scale. As noted by UCLouvai...

Join us in congratulating Prof. Leyla Isik for this recognition of her important contributions to the scientific study of social vision! 🎊

VSS 2025 Elsevier/VSS Young Investigator Award – Leyla Isik 2025 Elsevier/VSS Young Investigator Award – Leyla Isik Monday, May 19, 2025, 12:30 – 2:30 pm, Talk Room 2 The Vision Sciences Society is honored to present Leyla Isik with the 2025 Elsevier/VSS Young Investigator Award. The Elsevier/VSS Young Investigator Award, sponsored by Vision Research, i...

The Data Science and AI Institute selected seven Bloomberg Distinguished Professorship research clusters to recruit senior faculty. Among them is an Artificial and Natural Intelligence cluster, led by Profs. Leyla Isik, Kyle Rawlins, and Alan Yuille, that includes three BDP positions. Recruitment kicks off in 2025.

An AI & Natural Intelligence BDP cluster is selected to advance the research efforts at the DSAI | Cognitive Science The Data Science and AI Institute selected seven Bloomberg Distinguished Professorship research clusters to recruit senior faculty. Among them is an Artificial and Natural Intelligence cluster, led by Profs. Leyla Isik, Kyle Rawlins, and Alan Yuille, that includes 3 BDP positions. Recruitment kicks....

Congratulations to Jennifer Hu and Michael C. Frank on their paper being selected for an Outstanding Paper Award by the inaugural Conference on Language Modeling. Their paper is entitled "Auxiliary task demands mask the capabilities of smaller language models.”

COLM Outstanding Paper Award | Cognitive Science The inaugural Conference on Language Modeling is a new academic venue that aims to build a community of researchers focused on understanding, improving, and critiquing the development of language modeling technology. This year, four papers received COLM's Outstanding Paper Award. Among those is a pa...