Self-introduction

• I have been the President of the James S. McDonnell Foundation since 1986, where I have initiated programs to fund research in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, cancer biology, complex systems research, and education. Prior to that I was a program officer at the Rockefeller and Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundations in New York. My academic training wass in philosophy of science and quantum mechanics at Oxford University and the Rockefeller University in New York. I am interested in methodological issues in the neurosciences and psychology. • five major publications : o Schools for Thought: An Applied Science of Learning in the Classroom, MIT Press, 1994. o Education and the Brain: A Bridge Too Far, Educational Researcher, November 1997, 4-16. o The Myth of the First Three Years, Free Press, 1999. o Can We Talk? How the Cognitive Neuroscience of Attention Emerged from Neurobiology and Psychology, 1980-2005. Mapping Cognitive Neuroscience: Two dimensional perspectives on twenty years of cognitive neuroscience research, Cognitive Neurosciences IV, Edited by Michael S. Gazzaniga, MIT Press. • list of relevant projects: o Use of science maps to assess foundation supported research programs o The emergence of cognitive neuroscience from psychology and systems neuroscience, with particular attention to the positive/negative effects of imaging technologies o Application of directed acyclic graphs to deterministic variable sets in the behavioral sciences • link to your home page: http://www.jsmf.org/about/bruer-biography.htm • General Questions