Kotz Sonja

Sonja Kotz is a Professor and Chair in Neuropsychology and Translational Cognitive Neuroscience at Maastricht University's Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience. She also leads the Department of Neuropsychology & Psychopharmacology. Her career includes roles as a Research Professor at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (1996-2016), Head of Department at the University of Manchester (2013-2015), and academic leadership across Europe and the US. She holds honorary professorships at Universities of Lisbon, Leipzig, and Manchester.

Education: Habilitation in Psychology (Leipzig University, 2006), PhD in Psychology (Tufts University, 1996), and MA equivalent in Psycholinguistics (Tübingen University, 1986). Her research focuses on neuroimaging integration, cognitive/affective neuroscience, and translational approaches to brain-rhythm interactions.

Research interests emphasize rhythm processing across species, auditory-motor coupling, and body-brain dynamics. Recent work explores temporal regularity perception in macaques and humans, multisensory speech integration, and clinical applications of resting-state EEG analysis. Awards include the Max Planck Minerva Award (2007-2012) and MERA-ILCB Fellowship (2024).

Professional roles include presidency of the Society for Neurobiology of Language (2019-2020) and the European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (2014-2018). She leads the BAND-Lab (Brain, Auditory Neuroscience, and Development) and sits on editorial boards of NeuroImage, Cortex, and Frontiers journals. Current projects involve cross-species synchronization studies and translational cognitive neuroscience.