Judit Gervain

Judit Gervain is a Research Fellow at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and has held the position of Director of Research since 2017. She has been associated with institutions including the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (San Sebastian, Spain) and the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada). Her academic journey includes a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from SISSA, Italy, and dual MA degrees in Theoretical Linguistics and English/French Language and Literature from the University of Szeged, Hungary.

• Research Focus: Developmental cognitive neuroscience, speech perception in newborns, and early language acquisition using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS).
• Grants: ERC Consolidator Grant (2018), ANR grants (2015-2018), HFSP Young Investigator Grant (2014-2018), and others.

Scientific Contributions: Her work explores how newborns and infants process speech structure, prosody, and word order, leveraging interdisciplinary methods combining neuroscience and linguistics. She has pioneered the use of NIRS in infant cognitive studies.

• Key Awards: ERC Consolidator Grant, Lorentz/NIAS Fellowship, Mercator Fellowship, and multiple scholarships including Huygens and Erasmus.
• Mentoring: Supervised 8 Masters students, 3 PhDs (defended), 3 PhDs (ongoing), and 8 postdocs.
• Leadership: Deputy Director at the Institute of Neuroscience & Cognition (Paris), Board Member of the International Society for fNIRS, and editorial roles in journals like Neurophotonics and Developmental Science.