IRVINE : Top Scientist Will Join UCI Institute
UC Irvine has lured an internationally known psychologist and expert on vision and human information processing to join its Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences, university officials announced Tuesday.
George Sperling, the director of New York University’s Human Information Processing Laboratory, will join UCI in September as a distinguished professor of cognitive sciences. His appointment further positions the university to become one of the world’s foremost centers of research in cognition, learning and memory.
“George Sperling is one of the leading psychologists and visual scientists of our time,” said William R. Schonfeld, dean of UCI’s School of Social Sciences. “An expert in theory and applied research, his path-breaking work has helped explain how humans visualize and retain images.”
Sperling’s wife, cognitive scientist Barbara A. Dosher of Columbia University, will also be appointed to UCI’s department of cognitive sciences.
“This is going to be marvelously strengthening of both the institute and the department,” said R. Duncan Luce, director of the Institute of Mathematical and Behavioral Sciences, which was upgraded from a research unit to an institute by the University of California Board of Regents last week. “They are quite distinguished scientists.”
Sperling, 57, is the author of more than 100 published research articles and a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a scientific adviser to both the secretary of the Air Force and the secretary of defense.
Sperling has a Ph.D in psychology from Harvard University, a master’s degree in psychology from Columbia University, and was graduated summa cum laude from the University of Michigan with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and biophysics.
His salary of $115,000 at UCI is actually less than he received at New York University. But he decided to make the move because of the professional opportunities at UCI.
“I believe (UCI) . . . offers the best place to work and the best long-term future for the type of quantitative cognitive research that I do,” Sperling wrote in a message to department chairwoman Mary Louise Kean. “It is my expression of faith in the long-term potential of the University of California system in spite of its near-term (financial) problems.”
Dosher, 41, who will receive a salary of $66,000, is well-known in her own right for her research on the mechanics of human memory and how the brain stores and retrieves information, Luce said. She is the author or co-author of more than two dozen scientific articles.
Dosher received her Ph.D and master’s degree in experimental psychology from the University of Oregon, and graduated with honors with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from UC San Diego.
