Kathleen McDermott, professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, is one of two recipients of the 2019 Psychonomic Society Mid-career Award.
The award is given to raise the visibility of the experimental study of cognition and of the best mid-career scientists within the field, within awardees’ institutions, in the media and in the larger community.
In the Memory and Cognition Lab, McDermott investigates human memory encoding and retrieval and how the two interact with each other and other cognitive properties. Her research uses both psychological and functional neuroimaging (fMRI) techniques. McDermott is co-creator of the false memory paradigm now known as the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm.
A fellow of the Psychonomic Society and the Association for Psychological Science, McDermott received a bachelor’s degree from University of Notre Dame in 1990 and a PhD from Rice University in 1996. She joined Washington University for a postdoctoral fellowship and was named a research assistant professor in 1998. She became a full professor in 2011.