Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Ph.D. Birkbeck College, University of London, UK

Annette Karmiloff-Smith was, until she “retired” in 2003, Head of the Neurocognitive Development Unit at the Institute of Child Health, London where she ran a research team studying typical and atypical infant and child cognitive development. She now occupies a Professorial Research Fellowship at Birkbeck’s Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development. She has a "Doctorat en Psychologie Génétique et Expérimentale" from Geneva University, where she studied and worked with Piaget. Elected fellow of various distinguished societies and several honorary doctorates, she was awarded the 1995 BPS Book Award for Beyond Modularity (MIT Press, 1992). Her co-authored book, Rethinking Innateness: A Connectionist Perspective on Development, (MIT Press, 1996) was nominated for the 1997 APA Eleanor Maccoby Prize. She has just published Neurodevelopmental Disorders across the Lifespan (Oxford University Press, 2012). She is the author of 13 books and over 300 articles and chapters, as well as a series of booklets for parents on different aspects of foetal, infant and child development. Her current research focuses on Down syndrome as a model for understanding Alzeihmer’s disease at the genetic, cellular, neural and cognitive levels.  http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/our-staff/academic/annette-karmiloff-smith