معرفی
Tânia Fernandes is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Psychology, University of Lisbon (FP/UL), where she is a member of the Memory & Language (MeL) research team and the Cognition in Context (CO2) research group at the Research Center for Psychological Sciences (CICPSI). She serves on the School Board of FP/UL, the faculty Ethical Committee, and the Mind-Brain College of ULisboa, with 16 years of postdoctoral experience across 3 countries and 4 R&D units.
Her research centers on Cognitive Psychology and Experimental Cognitive Psychology, focusing on Visual Word Recognition, Orthographic Processing, and the neurocognitive mechanisms of reading acquisition and developmental dyslexia. She investigates how cultural experiences modulate cognition, particularly the interplay between reading and visual object recognition, and the mediator role of handwriting in letter recognition using behavioral lab-based methods combined with cognitive neuropsychology approaches.
Her recent publications (2021-2025) reveal two dominant research streams: cognitive psychology of reading (65% of output) exploring mirror-image processing, handwriting effects, and literacy impacts; and neurodegenerative disease mechanisms (35% of output) examining ER-mitochondria coupling in Alzheimer's disease. This dual focus demonstrates interdisciplinary collaboration while maintaining core contributions to reading science.
She has received 11 major awards including:
- Award at II Word Dyslexia Forum
- Elsevier Most Read/Cited Paper Prize (2018) for dyslexia screening research
- Wiley Most Read/Cited Paper Prize (2016) for literacy and mirror invariance studies
With extensive mentoring experience (3 postdocs, 1 PhD, 19 MSc students, 23 research assistants/interns), her research is funded by competitive governmental grants:
- LOVE-Word project (FCT, 2024, €5,000)
- LeMoN project (FCT, 2021-2024, €158,684)
- VOrtEx project (FCT & FEDER, 2017-2022, €183,590)
As an established member of CICPSI's MeL and CO2 research groups, she employs experimental cognitive methods while collaborating internationally with centers including MPI Nijmegen and ULB Belgium, and actively engages with policymakers through outreach initiatives.
