Nancy Kanwisher

Nancy Gail Kanwisher (born 1958) is a cognitive neuroscientist who holds the Walter A. Rosenblith Professorship in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a researcher at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, which she founded. She received a BS in biology from MIT in 1980 and a PhD in brain and cognitive sciences from MIT in 1986, working with Mary C. Potter, and did postdoctoral work with Anne Treisman at the University of California, Berkeley, before serving on the faculties of UCLA and Harvard and returning to MIT in 1997. Trained in cognitive psychology, she is credited with co-discovering the fusiform face area and the parahippocampal place area, brain regions specialised for recognising faces and environmental scenes, using functional MRI, behavioural methods, transcranial magnetic stimulation and electrocorticography. Her honours include the Troland Research Award of the National Academy of Sciences in 1999, the NIH Director's Pioneer Award in 2016, election as a Fellow of the British Academy in 2017, the Jean Nicod Prize in 2023 and a share of the 2024 Kavli Prize in neuroscience.