Biography

Dr. Fair is a Full Professor in the Institute of Child Development and the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota and the Redleaf Endowed Director of the Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain. Dr. Fair’s research focuses on mechanisms and principles that underlie the developing brain. He has over 150 peer-reviewed publications and has been cited nearly 24,000 times. He is currently funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the Department of Defense. Dr. Fair has also received many awards, including the MacArthur Genius Award in 2020 and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers Issued by President Barack Obama and the White House.

Website: https://icd.umn.edu/people/faird/

Dr. Melissa Koenig was raised in a working-class Midwest family as the eldest of three children. A first-generation college student, she earned a B.A. in Linguistics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Ph.D. in Psychology at The University of Texas at Austin. After completing post-doctoral fellowships at Harvard and the University of Chicago, she was hired by the University of Minnesota as an Assistant Professor in 2007 and has been a Full Professor there since 2016.
She is among the first to examine the impact of testimony on cognitive development. In their research, Dr. Koenig and her team present children with the need to make decisions that require different forms of trust, and examine children’s testimonial reasoning using a range of experimental and naturalistic techniques across cultures and interpersonal relationships. She examines individual and cultural differences in children’s evaluations of evidence, their capacities for critical thinking, and judgments of human agency, in contexts of collaboration and commitment.

Website: https://innovation.umn.edu/early-language-experience-lab/people-2/

Dr. Annelise Pesch is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Temple Infant and Child Laboratory working with Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek. Dr. Pesch’s work focuses on children’s social learning, with the goal of bridging gaps between research and real-world application. Dr. Pesch has published her work in leading journals, including PloS One and Current Opinion in Psychology. Her most cited article, published in PloS One is titled “Varieties of trust in preschoolers’ learning and practical decisions.”

Building Pipelines: Engaging Youth in Science

Session Type: Invited Symposium

Abstract

This symposium will present recent work in developing Pipelines of the next generation of scholars. This session will include presentations from middle school and high school students that have been engaged in research under the mentorship of SRCD members.

Sub Unit

• Invited Program

Individual Presentations

• Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience in the Era of Big Data - Presenting Author: Damien A. Fair, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Mentoring Young Scientists - Presenting Author: Melissa A. Koenig, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities; Presenting Author: Annelise Pesch, Temple University

Moderator

• Annelise Pesch, Temple University

Introducer

• Michelle P Brown, University of South Carolina