Dedre Gentner, the Alice Gabrielle Twight Professor of Psychology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, was named the 16th winner of the David E. Rumelhart Prize from the Robert J. Glushko and Pamela Samuelson Foundation. The prize is given to an individual “making a significant contemporary contribution to the theoretical foundations of human cognition. The award, presented at the recent annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society in Pasadena, California, is considered among the most prestigious honors in cognitive science and comes with a $100,000 prize.
Tania Lombrozo, associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a member of the Rumelhart Prize selection committee, said that “Dedre Gentner’s work tackles some of the most challenging and foundational topics in human cognition, including mental representation, reasoning, language and learning. Her approach has been systematic and multidisciplinary, informed by ideas across the cognitive sciences, including psychology, computer science and linguistics. Her work has advanced our understanding of analogical reasoning, metaphor, language learning and early childhood development, to name just a few.”
Professor Gentner has taught at Northwestern University since 1990. Previously, she was on the faculty at the University of Illinois and the University of Washington. Dr. Gentner is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and holds a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California, San Diego.