Photo of Professor Laurence Maloney

Laurence Maloney

Professor of Psychology and Neural Science

Research

Visual perception, decision making and movement planning. 
I am interested in how organisms gather information and act on it.  

Education

  • 1973 B.A. Yale University, Mathematics
  • 1982 M.S. Stanford University, Statistics
  • 1985 Ph.D. Stanford University, Psychology

In college, at Yale, I majored in mathematics with occasional courses in computer science and automata theory. After graduation, I spent six years as a systems programmer designing operating systems for computers and, then entered the doctoral program in Psychology at Stanford. While I was there I was also able to take graduate courses in statistics in several departments, leading to an M.S. in Mathematical Statistics and a minor in Electrical Engineering.

At Stanford I studied color vision with Brian Wandell, issues of representation and measurement with Amos Tversky, and signal detection theory and statistical modeling with Ewart A. C. Thomas. My doctoral dissertation concerned surface color perception and color constancy. After a brief stay as an Associate at NASA-Ames, I spent three years at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor as an assistant professor and then moved to join the vision group at New York University, where I remain.

My central research interest is the comparison of human performance to models of performance based on mathematical statistics, physics and mathematics.

 

Awards [Partial List]

  • 2008 Humboldt Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany
  • 1987 Troland Research Award of the National Academy of Sciences
  • 2014-2015 Fulbright Scholar Award, Hungary
  • 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation
  • 2012 Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, selected
  • 2009 Fellow, Society for Experimental Psychology, elected
  • 2011 Fellow, Association for Psychological Science, elected
  • 1995-96 Fellow, Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung, Bielefeld, Germany
  • 1999. Forchheimer Professor, Computer Science, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
  • 2008 WICN Visiting Scholar, Wales Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Bangor University, Bangor, Wales
  • 1994 Golden Dozen Teaching Award, New York University

Professor Maloney's full CV can be viewed here.