PEN Distinguished Lecture Series
The PEN Distinguished Lecture Series in Educational Neuroscience was created in association with the Foundations Proseminar course for graduate students in the Ph.D. in Educational Neuroscience (PEN) program. Since its inception, the series has grown!
The lecture series focuses on the intersection of the Science of Learning (learning across the lifespan) and Educational Neuroscience (learning across early life). Scientists and researchers who are pioneers in the fields of Cognitive-Educational Neuroscience, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, and Child Development come to Gallaudet University's campus to talk about their research.
Register for Upcoming Lectures
All lectures are open to the public and are video recorded for online distribution.
PEN DLS brochure for 2024-2025
Learning to Move and Moving to Learn
Dr. Karen E. Adolph is Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Center for Neuroscience at New York University.
Dr. Adolph’s major contributions to pioneering science and Educational Neuroscience involve her discoveries about infant learning and development, especially in the context of infant motor skill acquisition. Her contributions include new insights into human infant perceptual-motor development; motor skill acquisition from infants to older adults; learning and the transfer of knowledge; developmental transitions; development of infants’ exploratory activity; use of social information for guiding action; development of balance and locomotion; development of manual actions and tool use and cross-cultural differences in motor development. She has also pioneered innovative experimental technologies to answer basic questions in science, including head-mounted eyetracking in natural environments; computerized systems for behavioral coding, data exploration and data visualization; and she has promoted open data sharing in the behavioral sciences.
Dr. Adolph is the author of many scientific publications, including the widely esteemed SRCD monograph Learning in the Development of Infant Locomotion. She chairs the NIH study section on Motor Function and Speech Rehabilitation, is on the Advisory Board of the McDonnell Foundation, and is on the editorial boards of Developmental Psychobiology, Ecological Psychology, and Infancy.
Dr. Adolph received her bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Emory University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Adolph was previously on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University. She has received the James McKeen Cattell Sabbatical Award, the APF Robert L. Fantz Memorial Award, the APA Boyd McCandless Award, the ISIS Young Investigator Award, and FIRST and MERIT awards from NICHD.