ICIS Elections

Bar Ilan University, Israel

With a passion for advancing our understanding of infancy, I bring a strong foundation in attention, language, and neurodevelopment, shaped by a BA and MA in communication disorders from TAU. As a Fulbright scholar, I pursued a Ph.D. in clinical neuropsychology at CUNY, focusing on newborn self-regulation. Currently a full professor and pro-chair in the Psychology department at BIU, I’ve established a globally recognized lab, which integrates developmental psychologists, neuroscientists, and neurobiologists from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds, pioneering translational research in infant development. Having trained with ICIS leaders in New York and served as an associate editor of the Infancy Journal, I am aligned with the mission of ICIS. During my board term, we will propel ICIS forward with actions that reflect our commitment to cutting-edge research, foster a vibrant, open-minded, multi-disciplinary community, and work together to cultivate a broad approach that prioritizes early development for lifelong well-being around the world.

Riken Center for Brain Science, Japan

For the past twenty years I have been a PI in the field of developmental psychology at the Riken Center for Brain Science. My research centers on the why children acquire language with remarkable consistency despite the great diversities found across languages and their cultural contexts. I was initially drawn to this field by a realization that its foundations were almost entirely drawn on English language studies, which skewed their generalizations in ways that failed to account for acquisition patterns found in, for example, my own native language of Japanese. As a graduate student at Nagoya U., Edinburgh U. and Cornell U., and then as a tenured faculty member of Duke U., I was able to establish the contribution that research on Japanese infants could bring to my field. Since joining Riken I have been able to extend our comparative studies to languages including Thai, Korean and Chinese, along with French and Italian. I served on the executive board of ICIS from 2016 to 2022. If elected, I hope to hold the ICIS conference in Japan.

The University of Texas at Austin

I conduct interdisciplinary research that bridges developmental psychology and computer science, and my work spans the domains of social, cognitive, sensorimotor, and physiological development. A guiding principle of my research is that characterizing the real-time dynamics of naturalistic interactions will provide access to the proximal mechanisms of development. As such, from my earliest work I have developed a unique methodological toolkit to capture and analyze the dynamics of mother-infant activity using high-density data in free-flowing interactions.  My current interest is to characterize the processes of maternal mental health and infant social-emotional development in everyday contexts. While sensors have made high-density multimodal data increasingly easy to collect, few tools exist for working with and making sense of such large and complex datasets. Thus, another contribution of my work has been to develop and share resources and best practices for developmentalists interested in high-density data. This includes the open-source algorithms for automated detection of parent-child behavior and context from wearable sensors, including models to automatically detect infant distress and parent-child holding behaviors.

Princeton University, USA

I’m a professor in the psychology department at Princeton University, USA. With graduate students, postdocs, and undergraduates in the Princeton Baby Lab, we study how infants learn from the dynamics of their natural communicative environments. One of my goals on the ICIS board is to establish sustainable scientific exchange with developmental scientists from all over the place (in tandem with efforts in ManyBabies). Another goal is to encourage respect of the combinatorial potential of descriptive, experimental, computational, and neuroimaging approaches to advance our field.

University of Birmingham, UK

I am an infancy researcher and have been publishing my findings since 2001. I have used behavioural and physiological experimental methods to pursue knowledge about how infants come to perceive their multisensory worlds, with a focus on the development of touch perception, multisensory body representation, and perceiving the self in relation to external space. I also conduct research on perceptual and cognitive development more widely, investigating the development of cognitive control, perceptual style, object perception, spatial representation and attention. If elected to the ICIS board I am keen to advance our inclusivity and diversity as a society and scientific community, with focusses on supporting the development of the next generations of infancy researchers, the involvement of parents infants and children in shaping infancy research, the translation of discovery research into real world impact, and the inculcation of a supportive and inclusive approach to best practice in open science methods.

CNRS-Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod, France

I am a specialist in infant cognition and cognitive development. After working in this field for 20 years, both in Europe (Italy, Spain, France) and the US, I am now the founding director of the Lyon BabyLab at CNRS in France. My work is designed to focus on fundamental questions, asking how preverbal infants think and how their thinking changes with the advent of language. Over the past years, I have developed strong collaborations with local hospitals to search for early behavioral biomarkers of developmental disorders, and to examine development in preterm infants. As a developmental scientist, I believe we need science to inform investment policies in young infants and children. My goal in joining the ICIS board is to advance the science of infancy and disseminate our discoveries to policy makers, with an eye toward increasing the diversity of the infants we study and the next generation of researchers.

University of East Anglia, UK

My first conference talk was in 1992 at the 8th International Conference on Infant Studies in Miami, FL. It was a fabulous experience and hooked me on infant research. Since then, I have been an active member of ICIS and am eager to help lead the society forward. My passions resonate with ICIS strategic goals including promoting our science in a global and inclusive manner. I am also keen to work toward de-carbonising our society in the face of climate change. I am a Professor of Psychology at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. I received a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Indiana University in 1998. I am the recipient of the 2003 Early Research Contributions Award from SRCD, and the 2006 Robert L. Fantz Memorial Award from the American Psychological Foundation. My work focuses on early brain development, working memory, executive function, and word learning.

University of East London, UK

Sam Wass, Ph.D. is Professor of Early Years Neuroscience at the University of East London, UK, leader of the BabyDevLab (www.uelbabydev.com), and father to a 4-year-old son and a 2-year-old daughter. His research uses cutting-edge techniques including naturalistic dual EEG/fNIRS and home wearables to measure how real-world environments influence stress and concentration in typical and atypical populations (ASD, ADHD, anxiety preterm birth). Sam also works as a consultant with early years providers, commercial organisations and media. Sam currently services on the Program Committee for ICIS 2024 and would be delighted to continue to serve the society as a Board Member.