Nabanou Nozari Honored for Research on How the Brain Translates Abstract Thoughts into Words and Sentences

Nazbanou “Bonnie” Nozari, an associate professor of psychology in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, was honored by the American Psychological Association for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology in the area of human cognition and learning. Dr. Nozari has focused her research on how the brain translates abstract thoughts into words and sentences.

The American Psychological Association cited Dr. Nozari for her “incisive experimental studies of impaired and unimpaired speakers and developing computational models of the production process [to discover] how errors in production are detected and corrected. More generally, her work provides a fresh look at how attention and control modulate language use and demonstrates the applicability of domain general computational principles of cognition to the activities of speaking, writing, and typing.”

Dr. Nozri is an associate editor of the Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. She has recently joined the leadership team for Women in Cognitive Science, where she focuses on the problems that women face in having a career in cognitive science, with a special emphasis on the experiences of immigrant women.

After completing postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania and Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, Dr. Nozari taught in the department of neurology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She joined the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University in 2013.

Dr. Nozari earned a medical degree from Tehran University of Medical Sciences in Iran. She later completed a doctoral degree in cognitive psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.