John Richards

John Richards is a Carolina Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of South Carolina, affiliated with the McCausland College of Arts and Sciences. He holds a Ph.D. from UCLA and has been at USC since 1982, progressing from Assistant to Full Professor. His research focuses on infant neurodevelopment, attention mechanisms, and EEG/ERP analyses. He leads NIH-funded studies on sustained attention in infants and has co-investigated autism-related neurodevelopmental disorders. Richards has mentored numerous students and serves on editorial boards of journals like Child Development and Psychophysiology.

Education: B.A. (Biola College), M.A. (California State University), Ph.D. (UCLA). Grants include NIH R01 and MERIT awards. He has authored over 200 publications and holds fellowships from APA, APS, and AAAS. His labs include the Institute for Mind and Brain. Key research themes involve infant visual attention, face processing, and neuroimaging techniques.

Scientific achievements include developing MRI templates for pediatric neuroimaging and discovering neural correlates of infant cognitive development. His work bridges developmental psychology, neuroscience, and clinical research, with a focus on translational applications for neurodevelopmental disorders.