David Brainard

David Brainard
brainard@psych.upenn.edu
215-898-7320
Associate Dean for the Natural Sciences
RRL Professor of Psychology
116 College Hall, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6377

As Associate Dean for the Natural Sciences, David Brainard oversees the Departments of Biology, Chemistry, Earth and Environmental Science, Linguistics, Mathematics, Physics and Astronomy, and Psychology, as well as several research centers.

Brainard is an eminent cognitive neuroscientist whose research focuses on human vision, visual neuroscience, and computational modeling of visual processing. He is a Fellow of the Optical Society and the Association for Psychological Science. In 2013, he received the School’s highest teaching honor, the Ira H. Abrams Memorial Award. His Penn affiliations include the Graduate Groups in Neuroscience and Bioengineering and the undergraduate Cognitive Science and Visual Studies programs.

Brainard has served as Chair of the Department of Psychology and Director of the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science. He is a former Chair of the School of Arts & Sciences Personnel Committee and was a member of the 2008 faculty task force that recommended changes to the committee’s structure. He is currently Director of Penn’s Vision Research Center and President-Elect of the Vision Sciences Society.