Lisa Scott, Ph.D.

Professor of Psychology

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

2024 Awardee

Lisa Scott is dedicated to better understanding how the human brain works. In particular, her research concentrates on how the brain and behavior develop during infancy and the ways the adult brain changes with learning.

As a professor of psychology and the director of the Brain Cognition and Development Lab, Scott and her team have made strides in tracking brain development and how that development is shaped by our experiences. Under her leadership, the lab has received more than $10 million in funding from various groups such as the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health.

Scott conducted a series of investigations with infants from six to 12 months of age, examining how they learned about objects and faces. She found that electrical brain responses were affected by the words they heard paired with what they saw. She has also studied how infants learn to recognize faces, finding they tend to focus their learning on the faces of people they see and interact with most often.

Scott is also committed to training the next generation of psychologists and neuroscientists. Her work in science communication and community outreach has drawn in many prospective students. She has also created training programs and formed mentoring networks for trainers and trainees.

Among her many honors, Scott was named a National Academy of Sciences Kavli Fellow in 2014 and earned the Women in Cognitive Science Leadership Award in 2018. She is also the recipient of the UF Association for Academic Women’s 2021 Woman of Distinction Award. Scott has been invited to give numerous presentations and her work has been the subject of significant media attention.

“Her portfolio of funded research, high-impact publications, and awards puts her at the top of the list of scientists in her field,” says Julia Graber, a professor and chair of the Department of Psychology.