News Briefs

Nancy Nersessian Elected Fellow of Cognitive Science Society

September 23, 2009

Nancy J. Nersessian, Regents’ Professor with a joint appointment in the College of Computing and the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech, was elected as a Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society this summer.

The society is an international organization that promotes interdisciplinary research in the field of cognitive science, which is comprised of disciplines as diverse as artificial intelligence, linguistics, anthropology, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy and education.

“I’m honored to be elected a Fellow,” said Nersessian. “I see it as recognizing the fact that for over 25 years I’ve been engaged in research on the cognitive practices of scientists and engineers and have contributed to establishing a sub-field within cognitive science that focuses on scientific and technological thinking. Although much of the research aims to understand basic cognitive processes, one major application area has been to learning in science and engineering.”

Nersessian is known as one of the founders of the field of cognitive studies of science and has a study appearing in the October 2009 issue of the journal Topics in Cognitive Science.

Her study of the working methods of scientists helps in understanding how class and instructional laboratory settings can be improved to foster creativity, and how new teaching methods can be developed based on this understanding. These methods will allow science students to master model-based reasoning approaches to problem solving and open the field to many more who do not think of themselves as scientists as traditionally viewed.

“Cognitive studies of scientific and technological thinking reveal that scientific reasoning and problem solving, even if at times extraordinarily creative, extend ordinary cognition,” said Nersessian. “This implies that many more people could become scientists, given well-designed training. Teaching methods developed from investigations of model-based reasoning are already improving student mastery of science.”

Before her election as a Fellow, Nersessian served as president of the Cognitive Science Society during 2003 to 2004 and was on the governing board from 2001 to 2006.

She is currently associate editor of the journal, Cognitive Science.

For more information Contact David Terraso (Phone: 404-385-2966)