Jim Magnuson

Jim Magnuson is a Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Connecticut, affiliated with the Language & Cognition PhD program within the Perception-Action-Cognition division. He concurrently serves as Group Leader and head of the Computational Neuroscience group at the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain, & Language (BCBL) in Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain, holding an Ikerbasque Research Professor position through the Basque Science Foundation.

His educational background includes an AB in Linguistics from the University of Chicago (1993) and a PhD in Brain & Cognitive Sciences from the University of Rochester (2001), completed under advisors Mike Tanenhaus and Dick Aslin.

Research spans neurobiological and cognitive mechanisms of language, emphasizing speech perception, word/sentence processing, developmental/acquired disorders, and lifespan language plasticity through computational modeling and interdisciplinary collaboration. His work integrates cognitive, neural, and genetic perspectives to build comprehensive theoretical frameworks.

As principal investigator, he leads the CCNLL initiative and an NSF-funded Research-Traineeship program (Science of Learning & Art of Communication), while co-directing the Cognitive Science Shared Electrophysiology Resource Lab (CSSERL).