Evelina Fedorenko Receives National Award for Outstanding Research on the Brain’s Language Network

Evelina Fedorenko, associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences and investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been named a recipient of the 2025 Troland Research Award from the National Academy of Science.

The annual award is presented to early-career scientists who have made groundbreaking contributions to the field of experimental psychology. Dr. Fedorenko shares the award with Yale University’s Nicholas Turk-Brown.

Using behavioral and brain imaging methods, intracranial recordings and stimulation, and computational modeling, Dr. Fedorenko investigates how people understand and produce language. Her findings have significantly advanced the understanding of the language network in the human brain and its relationship with other brain networks.

In addition to her roles at MIT, Dr. Fedorenko holds an appointment in the department of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and is affiliated with the Harvard-MIT Program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology. Before joining the MIT faculty in 2019, she was a faculty member with Harvard Medical School for five years.

Dr. Fedorenko received her bachelor’s degree in psychology and linguistics from Harvard and her Ph.D. in cognitive science from MIT.