Laura Schulz


Laura E. Schulz is a professor of cognitive science in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the Principal Investigator of the Early Childhood Cognition Lab at MIT. She is known for her work on early childhood development of cognition, causal inference, discovery, and learning.

Life

Schulz graduated from the University of Michigan in 1992, with a BA in Philosophy, and she went on to achieve a Masters and Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley in 2002 and 2004, respectively. At Berkeley, she closely worked with Alison Gopnik, researching computational models of cognition. In 2005, she joined the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There, alongside Pawan Sinha, she runs the post-baccalaureate Research Scholars Program in Brain and Cognitive Sciences, working to prepare disadvantaged students for graduate school.
She is the Principal Investigator of the Early Childhood Cognition Lab at MIT, studying learning in early childhood.

Research

Schulz's research focuses on children's cognition, specifically how children begin to form their worldviews from the facets of information they obtain everyday. Her work focuses on three main topics in children cognition. One of the topics is how children process the information they've gained in order to better infer, interact, and explain the world around them. Another topic is on the factors that allows children express curiosity and explore their environment, which also allow them to strengthen their cognition. Finally, how the information gained from the previous points will interact with one another to form their social cognition and ultimately build their sense of self and their interactions with others.

Personal life

Schulz is the daughter of teacher Margot Schulz and lawyer Isaac Schulz. She is the oldest of their two children. Her sister, Kathryn Schulz, is a staff writer for The New Yorker. She is married to Sue Kaufman and has four children: Henry Philofsky, MJ Kaufman, Rachel Novick, and Adele Kaufman-Schulz.

Awards and recognition