Michelle A Hurst

Michelle A. Hurst is an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University in both the Department of Psychology and the Center for Cognitive Science. She is the Principal Investigator of the Quantitative Development Lab (The QUAD Lab), where she explores systematic variation in human cognition across development and context.

Dr. Hurst earned her PhD in Psychology from Boston College (2017) and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago (2017–2022). Her research bridges cognitive, developmental, and educational psychology through behavioral experiments, computational models, and a focus on proportional reasoning and mathematical cognition in infants to adults.

Her recent work examines how contextual factors influence mathematical intuitions, particularly in fraction and decimal understanding. She advocates for open science practices, including pre-registration and open data. Her lab’s research has been funded by the NICHD, and she is actively recruiting graduate students and postdocs for Fall 2025.

Dr. Hurst’s scientific awards include:

• Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) grant

She collaborates with researchers at the University of Chicago, Boston College, and other institutions to advance understanding of cognitive development and educational interventions.