Howard C. Nusbaum

Howard C. Nusbaum is the Stella M. Rowley Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago, serving as SSD Deputy Dean, Deputy Dean of the College, and Master of the Social Sciences Collegiate Division. He holds a B.A. in Psychology and Computer Science from Brandeis University (1976), a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from SUNY Buffalo (1981), and an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship at Indiana University (1984). His research focuses on wisdom, language processing, attention, memory consolidation, and cognitive engineering.

Notable contributions include studies on sleep’s role in memory consolidation, songbird syntactic learning, and the cognitive impact of prayer. He has served as Chair of the Department of Psychology (1997–2009) and Editor for Brain and Language and PLoS One. Awards include the Quantrell Award for Teaching (2012) and APS Fellowship (2009).

His work spans interdisciplinary labs (e.g., APEX Lab) and explores topics like absolute pitch variability and music’s perceptual effects. He advises the John Templeton Foundation and contributes to cognitive neuroscience and human factors research.