Morton Ann Gernsbacher received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1983. She was an assistant, associate, and full professor at the University of Oregon from 1983 to 1992. She then joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she is a Vilas Research Professor and the Sir Frederic C. Bartlett Professor of Psychology. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society for Experimental Psychologists, the American Psychological Association (Divisions 1, 3, 6), the Association for Psychological Science, the American Educational Research Association, the Psychonomic Society, and the Society for Text and Discourse.

Gernsbacher has received a Research Career Development Award and a Senior Research Fellowship from the National Institutes of Health, a Fulbright Research Scholar Award, a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Texas at Dallas, a James McKeen Cattell Fellowship, a George A. Miller Award, a Professional Opportunities for Women Award from the National Science Foundation, a Distinguished Service to Psychological Science Award from APA, an Ernest R. Hilgard Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science, a Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the Society for Text and Discourse, a Sloan Foundation-TIER (Teaching Integrity in Empirical Research) Fellowship; and a Phi Kappa Phi (Honor Society) Biennial Scholar Award.

Gernsbacher has served as President of the 25,000-member Association for Psychological Science, President of the Society for Text and Discourse, President of the Division of Experimental Psychology of the APA, President of the Foundation for the Advancement for Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Chair of APA’s Board of Scientific Affairs, Chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Psychology Section, Chair of the Cognitive Science Society’s Annual Convention, Chair of the International Travel Committee of the Society for Teaching of Psychology, member of the Psychonomic Society Governing Board, the Medical Affairs Committee of the National Alliance for Autism Research, NSF’s Social, Behavioral, & Economic Sciences Advisory Committee, and AAAS’s Scientific Program Committee.

Gernsbacher is an award-winning teacher, whose open-access, active-learning undergraduate courses were deemed APA’s 2018 Outstanding Educational Resource. In 1998, Gernsbacher received the Hilldale Award for Distinguished Professional Accomplishment, the highest award bestowed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty. She has served as editor-in-chief of the journal, Memory & Cognition, co-editor of Psychological Science in the Public Interest, associate editor of Cognitive Psychology and Language and Cognitive Process, and has served on numerous editorial boards. She has delivered the William James Lecture, the Norman Anderson Distinguished Lecture, the Psi Chi Distinguished Lecture, the Caskey Distinguished Lecture, the Ricciuti Lecture, the John Kendall Lecture, the Ferne Forman Fisher Lecture, and the APA Distinguished Scientist Lecture, and she was the Inaugural Lufkin Honorary Lecturer and the Inaugural Evan L. Brown Memorial Lecturer.

For nearly 40 years, Gernsbacher’s research has investigated the cognitive and neural mechanisms that underlie human communication. Her research bears both basic science implications and national policy applications. She has published nearly 200 journal articles and invited chapters. She has authored or edited 10 books, including Language Comprehension as Structure Building (Erlbaum, 1990); the Handbook of Psycholinguistics (Academic Press, 1994; Elsevier, 2006); Coherence in Spontaneous Text (Benjamins, 1995), the Handbook of Discourse Processes (Erlbaum, 2002), and two editions of Psychology and the Real World: Essays Illustrating Fundamental Contributions to Society (Worth, 2010; 2014). Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the Centers for Disease Control, and several foundations.

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Morton Ann Gernsbacher
1202 W Johnson St
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Madison, WI 53706

Email: MAGernsb@wisc.edu
Phone: +1 608-262-6989