Growing up, I loved both science and art, but school made science seem boring. My journey through fine arts and neuroscience reignited my passion, and now I aim to inspire that same wonder in every child. I believe the science classroom can be a space of creativity and fascination, where students discover the beauty of the physical world through the connections between science, sound, and music.

As a child, I loved the arts and sciences, but at school, I was taught that science was a boring subject with tedious rules, and my interest in them was destroyed.

After high school, I studied fine arts. During that time, I gradually became intrigued by the beauty of the physical world and the challenge of understanding it. I signed up to take some courses at the School of Physical Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires. I also was fascinated with neuroscience and went to obtain my Ph.D. in computational neurobiology at UCSD. In the latter years, I was able to bring together my passions, arts, science, and public service. My goal is that, through the connections between science, sound, and music, the science classroom becomes a space of creation and fascination.

Description of his work

My current work aims to make school more engaging and enjoyable. I do this by creating interactive web applications, physical hands-on experiences, and curricula. These tools allow children and teachers to experience the wonders of sound and learn science through playfulness and creation.

My team’s web applications replicate commonly used tools in STEM labs. However, we modified and enhanced them to make them highly user-friendly and suitable for creating and exploring sounds.

We conduct professional development for teachers and analyze the classroom implementation of the activities. This process allows us to iterate on both the curriculum and the applications, making them even more engaging and easier to implement.

Our web applications and resources are accessed approximately 400,000 times per year. This high level of engagement demonstrates the effectiveness of our approach in making science education more interactive and enjoyable for students and teachers alike.

Useful Links

Connect with Dr. Minces: https://www.linkedin.com/in/victor-hugo-minces-05330780/

Our program’s website: https://listeningtowaves.com/

Our paper about arts integration: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2jg6c6qw

A short video describing our program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvsie4P7G0E

Connect with Dr. Victor Hugo Minces through his LinkedIn Profile.

I am a psychologist interested in very early childhood development. I am particularly interested in examining development in the context of global health and supporting the implementation of neurodevelopmental research into diverse, global contexts.

I am a psychologist interested in very early childhood development. My work focuses on identifying early neural and cognitive markers that influence later developmental outcomes. I am also very interested in global health and have a strong passion for making developmental science representative of children around the world.

I currently work on the Brain Imaging for Global Health (BRIGHT) project, which examines child development from the third trimester of pregnancy to preschool age in The Gambia. We are trying to identify how early risk and protective factors shape brain and cognitive development in this context. Within this large study, my main focus has been to characterize cognitive development among the children in this setting. I am also interested in how maternal-infant relationships and the wider family network help promote healthy development amidst contextual risk factors like undernutrition.

Key Findings

What happens in infancy is important for shaping a child’s development. In my work so far, we have identified that early temperament, neural function, and attention relate to later cognitive skills and mental health.

Useful Links

Brain Imaging for Global Health (BRIGHT) project: https://www.globalfnirs.org/

Dr. Bosiljka Milosavljevic, Queen Mary University of London: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sbbs/staff/dr-bosiljka-milosavljevic-.html

Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bosiljka-Milosavljevic-2

Connect with Dr. Bosiljka Milosavljevic through her LinkedIn and X Profile.

My interest in brain plasticity grew when my daughter was diagnosed with a brain malformation. This personal experience led me to explore how brain connections are shaped by both positive influences like education and challenges like disease. It’s clear that education is a powerful force for societal progress, and by bridging the gap between scientific research and classroom practice, we can harness brain plasticity to create more effective, evidence-based educational approaches.

I am a neuroscientist who originally graduated in Medicine with a PhD in Biophysics in Brazil, and I have a postdoctoral stay in Psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. During my stay in Cambridge, my daughter was diagnosed with a brain malformation, and this strongly attracted my interest in the development and plasticity of the brain. From then on, I dedicated my work to understanding how brain connections form along life and how they become molded by the environment, for the good (education) or for the bad (diseases).

Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to change its structure and function by interaction with the environment. My first studies on this topic employed animal models of developmental defects of a big bundle of fibers in our brain, called corpus callosum. I was interested in checking whether the brain was able to change callosal connections throughout life and how this occurred. From animal models, my team at the lab moved to a direct approach to human brains, employing neuroimaging tools. We discovered a phenomenon called long-distance plasticity, by which the great avenues of brain connections could change profoundly in certain circumstances: malformations, trauma, and body accidents. My group is now dedicated to studying brain plasticity in naturalistic settings, such as person-to-person interactions, using portable brain imaging techniques.

Key Findings

During the work to investigate pathological changes in human brain connections, a PhD student in my group discovered that what we thought were abnormal connections arising from pathologies, in fact, were present “secretly” in normal circumstances. We concluded that our brains develop a set of subtle connections that could serve as a connectomic reserve for later development under environmental demands. This discovery intensified my interest in education as a crucial example of the power of societal initiatives to influence the plastic sculpting of brain connections throughout life.

Useful Links

Rede Nacional de Ciência para Educação: https://cienciaparaeducacao.org

UNESCO Chair of Science for Education: https://www.catedraunescocpe.org/english

Articles IBE-UNESCO:  https://solportal.ibe-unesco.org/

Where to buy his books: Amazon link.

I love to bring fresh perspectives into my books by applying knowledge and experience from many different disciplines and real-world experiences. As a professor of engineering, I’ve also worked in lots of different places and done very different things: Russian translator on Soviet trawlers, a teacher in China, a US Army Captain, and a radio operator at the South Pole Station in the Antarctic. (I met my husband there—I had to go to the end of the earth to meet that man!).

My work focuses on the complex mechanisms of learning and how we can harness them to help people of all ages and backgrounds succeed. Drawing on my diverse background—from linguist in the U.S. Army to radio operator at the South Pole to professor of engineering—I aim to make the science of learning accessible and applicable to everyone.

Through my books like “A Mind for Numbers,” “Learning How to Learn,” and “Mindshift,” I share evidence-based strategies for overcoming procrastination, effective studying, and learning difficult subjects. I also teach one of the world’s most popular online courses, “Learning How to Learn,” which has reached over 3 million students worldwide. In addition to my work focused on learners, I also collaborate with Dr. Beth Rogowsky and Dr. Terrence Sejnowski to help educators enhance their teaching practices. Together with David Joyner of Georgia Tech, we have created a three-course MOOC series on Coursera called “Uncommon Sense Teaching,” which delves into the cognitive psychology and neuroscience behind effective teaching strategies in both face-to-face and online environments. We have also co-authored a book, “Uncommon Sense Teaching: Practical Insights in Brain Science to Help Students Learn,” to make this knowledge more accessible to educators worldwide.

Key Findings

Chunking, or breaking information into manageable pieces, is a powerful technique for mastering complex subjects. By focusing on understanding the main ideas and practicing them in short, frequent sessions, learners can effectively transfer information into long-term memory. This strategy, combined with regular recall practice and self-testing, can significantly improve retention and depth of understanding.

Useful Links

Professor Barbara Oakley’s website: www.barbaraoakley.com

Learning How to Learn Course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

Where to buy her books: Amazon link.

Science must question itself to define its place in the cultural and moral transformations that today requires our Civilization, and consequently must also constructively challenge those who design public policies: any scientific agenda that points to these efforts will contribute to building a more equal and fair society.

The work we do in our research team has three main goals.

• • Learning about Poverty and Emotional and Cognitive Development:

First, we want to better understand the impact of living in poverty on children’s emotional and cognitive development during their first 20 years of life. Here, we consider how different social and cultural factors influence their brain development. We work collaboratively with our regional and international partners.

• • Interventions to help kids:

We also create, run, and test experimental interventions that explore how the brain’s neural pathways (neuronal plasticity) and an individual’s ability to learn new skills (cognitive plasticity) can change during emotional and cognitive development. We study this topic in infants, children, and teens from low-income and wealthier backgrounds. Over the past 25 years, we have implemented different experiments, including cognitive training through manual and computerized activities, mother-child play sessions, and adaptation of school curricula.

• • Policies for Child Development:

Our final goal is to apply this knowledge to design, implement, and evaluate policies promoting human development. We do this by understanding the views that caregivers and others involved in childcare have regarding self-regulatory development, which is how kids learn to understand and manage their own thoughts and feelings. We also work on creating decision-making tools, like algorithms, to help design and track policies focused on early childhood.

Key Findings

Growing up in poverty during childhood can impact how children manage their emotions and how they learn. However, these effects are not the same for every child. A broad range of factors can lead to different outcomes for children coming from homes living with and without socioeconomic deprivations. These factors can be, for example, the child’s health, the quality of relationships with their caretakers, environmental stressors, learning opportunities, parenting styles, the caregivers’ mental health, educational quality, and community resources. After implementing our experimental interventions, such as training and curriculum adaptation, we observed a positive influence on the children’s emotional development and learning capacities.

Further Readings

Migeot, J., Panesso, C., Duran-Aniotz, C., Ochoa, C., Huepe, D., Santamaría-García, H., . . & Lipina, S.J. (in press). Allostasis, health, and development in Latin America. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews.

Delgado, H., Lipina, S.J., Mamen Pastor, V., Muniz Terrera, G., Rodríguez, R., . . . & Carboni, A. (2024). Differential psychophysiological responses associated with decision-making in children from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Child Development. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.14082.

Pietto, M., Giovannetti, F., Segretin, M.S., Kamienkowski, J.E., & Lipina, S.J. (2023). Increased integration of functional connectivity after cognitive intervention in preschoolers from low socioeconomic status. Developmental Psychology. https://doi.org/ 10.1037/dev0001541.

Lipina, S.J. (2023). The importance of conceiving human development as a complex system. The Lancet Global Health. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(22)00502-2.

Stevens, C., Pakulak, E., Segretin, M.S., Lipina, S.J. (Eds.) (2020). Neuroscientific explorations of poverty. Erice, Italy: International School of Mind, Brain and Education – Ettore Majorana Foundation for Scientific Culture. ISBN 978-987-86-6736-2.

Providing opportunities for every child and family to thrive can be accelerated by globally sharing science and cultural knowledge surrounding learning and wellbeing.

The work of my laboratory team examines the neural basis of affect, learning, and attention.
We try to understand the dynamics of the brain and body and how they align with environmental demands to engage in learning. We use convergent techniques ranging from neurophysiological recording in rodents, computational and robotic models, and work that translates our basic science for the purpose of studying learning in natural settings such as classrooms. We examine experiential history as a means to understand individual differences in physiology, brains, and their manifestation in classroom learning. We believe that gaining a deep understanding of what makes the brain change states, and how those states impact learning and socialization can be fundamental in imagining how societies can be aligned with the learning needs of children and families for the purpose of thriving and wellbeing. I also engage in work directly with schools, educators, non-profits, and in global science of learning advocacy towards grass roots efforts to support education and society. In my first career, I was a high school mathematics teacher.

Key Findings

Time and timing matter for learning. The way in which students are able to synchronize or time their attention and action with their teachers and other students may relate to how well they are able to quickly pay attention to things in the world, like speech streams and video streams. We did a series of studies and discovered that an individual’s ability to musically synchronize with another person is related to their ability to rapidly attend to information, both auditory and visual. Group musical activities may be particularly relevant to building the ability to synchronize with others.

Further Reading

Khalil, AC, Minces, VH, Iversen, J, Musacchia, G, Zhao, C, Chiba, AA (2019) Music, Cognition, and Education. 21st CENTURY EDUCATION: THE LEARNER, THE ENVIRONMENT OECD Publications.

Khalil AK, Minces VH, McLoughlin, G. & Chiba A (2013). Musical synchrony predicts attention in school children. Frontiers in Educational Psychology, Special Issue: Educational Neuroscience, Constructivist Learning, and the Mediation of Learning and Creativity in the 21st Century. Front. Psychol, 02 September.

D’Andrea-Penna, G.M., Iversen, J.R., Chiba, A.A., Khalil, A.K., Minces, V.H. (2020) One Tap at a Time: Correlating Sensorimotor Synchronization with Brain Signatures of Temporal Processing, Cerebral Cortex Communications, Volume 1, Issue 1.