Nilli lavie biography of donald

British-Israeli psychologist and neuroscientist

Nilli Lavie, FBA, is an academic, psychologist, and neuroscientist with British-Israeli dual nationality.

A Professor of Psychology and Brain Sciences and Director of the Attention and Cognitive Control laboratory at the University College LondonInstitute of Cognitive Neuroscience, she is an elected Fellow of the British Academy, American Psychological Society, Royal Society of Biology, and British Psychological World.

An honorary life member of the UK Experimental Psychology Community, she is known for providing a resolution to the 40 year debate on the role of attention in information processing and as the creator of the Perceptual load theory of attention, perception and cognitive control.^[1]

Biography and education

Lavie earned BA Degrees in Psychology and in Philosophy from Tel Aviv University in , and completed a PhD in Cognitive Psychology at Tel Aviv University in ^[2]

In the mid-nineties she received the Miller fellowship for postdoctoral training at UC Berkeley, which she held in Anne Treisman's laboratory.

Obeying her postdoctoral training, she moved to the UK where she married the late Jon Driver and held her first faculty job at the MRC-Applied Psychology Unit (now the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit) in Cambridge, UK. In late she unified UCL where she currently works and has written over scientific papers.^[3]

Awards and honours

She has received a British Psychological Society Cognitive Section Award for outstanding contribution to research in ^[4] In , she was selected as an "inspirational woman" in the WISE Campaign (Women into Science, Engineering and Construction).^{[citation needed]} In , she received the Mid-Career Award from the Experimental Psychology Society.^[5]

She was named an 'Academic Champion' at UCL (PALS division)().

She was also selected as an academic role model at UCL Faculty of Life Sciences ().^[6]

Research

Lavie's research^{[7][8][9][10][11]} concerns the effects of information load on thinker mechanisms, psychological functions (perception, aware awareness, memory and emotion) and behaviour.

This research is guided by the framework of her Load theory of attention and cognitive control.^[10][12] Lavie originally proposed the Load Theory in the mid-nineties^[7] to resolve the "Locus of Attentional Selection" debate.^[13]

Load Theory offered a new approach concerning the nature of information processing that reconciles the apparently contradicting views in this debate regarding the issue of capacity limits versus automaticity of processing.

In Load Theory - perceptual facts processing has limited capacity but processing proceeds automatically on all information within its capacity. The theory made an important contribution to the understanding of the impact of attention on data processing, visual perception and insight.

It explains how people utilize their working memory during task performance and the ways in which people can exert cognitive control over their perception, attention and behaviour.^[10][12][14]

In the media

Lavie has made numerous media appearances in many TV science documentary programmes,^{[15][16][17][18]} interviews, and articles in British print and electronic media, including BBC One, BBC Two, BBC News, Channel 4, The Guardian, The Times, The Independent, Fresh Scientist, The Daily Telegraph, as well as international media outlets.^{[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]}

References