Assistant Professor, Rossier School of Education
Assistant Professor, Brain and Creativity Institute
Faculty in the Neuroscience Graduate Program
Concentration: Educational Psychology
Expertise: Expert in the neuroscience of learning, creativity, culture, morality and social interaction...additional information
E-Mail: immordin@usc.edu
Phone: (213) 821-2969
Curriculum Vitae & Publications
Professional Website
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, Ed.D. is an affective neuroscientist and human development psychologist who studies the neural, psychophysiological and psychological bases of social emotion, self-awareness and culture and their implications for development and schools. She is an Assistant Professor of Education at the Rossier School of Education, an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the Brain and Creativity Institute, and a member of the Neuroscience Graduate Program Faculty at the University of Southern California, where she was formerly a joint postdoctoral fellow under the mentorship of Robert Rueda and Antonio Damasio. A former junior high school teacher, she earned her doctorate at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, where she was the recipient of grants from the Spencer Foundation and the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation. She is the Associate Editor for North America for the award-winning journal Mind, Brain and Education, and the inaugural recipient of the Award for Transforming Education through Neuroscience. She and her co-authors received the 2010 Cozzarelli Prize from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences for the most distinguished paper of the year in the behavioral and social sciences category, for the paper, "Neural correlates of admiration and compassion." PNAS, 106(19), 8021-8026. In 2011 she was named a "Rising Star" by the Association for Psychological Science, and received a Commendation from the County of Los Angeles for commitment to translational research in neuroscience and education. In 2012 she received an honor coin from the U.S. ARMY for educational contributions toward supporting soldiers' development of cultural literacy and compassion. She lectures nationally and abroad on the neural and psychosocial implications of brain and cognitive science research for curriculum and pedagogy, and is the content director for a new online, free course for teachers on learning and the brain, funded by the Annenberg Media Foundation (www.learner.org/courses/neuroscience).