Susana Martinez-Conde

    Susana is Director of the Laboratory of Visual Neuroscience at BNI. She received a B.S. in Experimental Psychology from Universidad Complutense de Madrid and a Ph.D in Medicine and Surgery from the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. She was a postdoctoral fellow with Nobel Laureate David Hubel at Harvard Medical School, and then an Instructor in Neurobiology at the same institution. She was a Lecturer at University College London from 2001 to 2003 before assuming her directorship at BNI the following year.

    Susana and Stephen are laboratory directors at the Barrow Neurological Institute (BNI) in Phoenix, Arizona, where they study various aspects of visual, sensory and cognitive neuroscience. Their research and outreach activities have been written up in hundreds of media stories including many that have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, National Public Radio, Der Spiegel, New Scientist and Wired magazine. Both are monthly columnists for ScientificAmerican.com. Their shared column on the neuroscience of illusions gets hundreds of thousands of hits every month. One of their recent column contributions is the most downloaded article in sciam.com history.

    Susana and Stephen are founding board members of the Neural Correlate Society, and Susana serves as its Executive Chair. NCS hosts the annual “Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest.” The contest’s website maintains an archive of visual illusions and their explanations for a broad audience, and receives almost three million hits per year. They both serve on the board of advisors for Scientific American: Mind and in addition to their column have published several feature articles in Scientific American (circulation > 1,000,000 readers) and several of its family of journals. Their academic publication credits include contributions to Nature, Nature Neuroscience, Neuron, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, and they have each authored over 75 academic publications.