Nuria Sebastian Galles - Biography#

Nuria Sebastian-Galles received a PhD in Experimental Psychology at the University of Barcelona in 1986, then held post-doctoral appointments at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (Nijmegen) and the LSCP-CNRS (Paris). She was then appointed Associate Professor at the University of Barcelona Faculty of Psychology, and promoted to Full Professor in 2002. In 2009 she moved to the Universitat Pompeu Fabra where she leads the Speech Acquisition and Perception (SAP) Research Group. She has been Visiting Scholar at several research centers, including the IRCS at the University of Pennsylvania, the ICN at University College London, and the University of Chicago. International recognition has included a James S. McDonnell Foundation Award (“Bridging Mind, Brain and Behavior” Program, 2001) and delivering the Nijmegen Lectures (2005). In 2009 and again in 2014 she was awarded the ICREA Academia Prize of the Catalan Government. She was a member of the advisory group of the “Brain and Learning” initiative of the OECD from 2002 to 2006, and is currently vice-president of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council.

From 2008-2013 she coordinated a Consolider-Ingenio 2010 research consortium, comprising 6 interdisciplinary research teams (>150 researchers), to investigate Bilingualism and Cognitive Neuroscience ("BRAINGLOT"). She currently holds an ERC Advanced Grant ("Under Control") investigating the relationship between attention and language development.

She has authored over 90 publications in international journals (including Science, PNAS, Journal of Neuroscience). Her editorial work includes Associate Editorship of Developmental Science (2005-2014) and of Language Learning and Development (since 2013); she is also Editor of the Cognitive Neuroscience Series of Language Learning and member of numerous editorial boards including Bilingualism, Language and Cognition and Trends in Neuroscience and Education.