Michael Frank earns early career award in cognitive science
By Alex Shashkevich,
MICHAEL FRANK, associate professor of psychology, was recently awarded the 2017 Early Career Impact Award for Cognitive Science Society by the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences (FABBS).
The annual award is presented to early career scientists of FABBS member societies “who have made major contributions to the sciences of mind, brain and behavior” and who are still in their first decade of post-PhD work, according to the FABBS announcement.
“Dr. Frank has helped move the science forward in several large efforts focused on methods, reproducibility and replicability,” the FABBS announcement stated.
Frank, who is also a professor, by courtesy, of linguistics, has been at Stanford since 2010. His research focuses on children’s language, cognition and development of speech. Frank combines experimental and computational approaches in his studies, analyzing the results with a statistical model that relies on Bayesian inference. His latest work examined how toddlers’ grammatical knowledge emerges.
“I was very surprised and honored to get this award,” Frank said. He emphasized the importance of scientific communities like the Cognitive Science Society, in which he has been involved since his undergraduate years at Stanford.
Frank will officially receive the honor during an annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society in July.