Wendy S. Francis

Dr. Wendy S. Francis is Professor and Department Chair of Psychology at The University of Texas at El Paso's College of Liberal Arts, where she directs the Bilingual Cognition Laboratory. Her NIH/NSF-funded research examines bilingual memory organization, cross-language transfer processes, and semantic representation, using experimental methods including repetition priming, free recall paradigms, and mathematical modeling.

Her core research areas include:

• Functional organization of bilingual memory systems
• Transfer processes in human memory
• Representation of words and concepts
• Impact of language exposure on vocabulary access

Dr. Francis has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles in top journals including Journal of Experimental Psychology: General and Journal of Memory and Language. She received the Joseph A. Gengerelli Distinguished Dissertation Award and Helen M. C. Stern Professorship. She mentors numerous graduate students and has secured continuous external funding since 2001 for her cognitive research on the U.S.-Mexico border.