Dr. Nora Bradford is a cognitive scientist and science journalist. In her Ph.D., she investigated metacognition, or “thinking about thinking”, and worked to bridge the gap between the study of perceptual metacognition and the study of metacognition in learning. She also contributed to research on the funding challenges within consciousness research and on the effect of transparency in AI chatbot use. During grad school, she was also a writing consultant for UC Irvine’s Graduate Writing Hub, where she helped graduate students plan and refine their writing. Before her Ph.D. she worked at the University of Pennsylvania as a lab manager and studied neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy at the University of Chicago. Outside of her research, she’s a passionate science journalist, usually writing about new biology, neuroscience, and psychology findings for outlets like Scientific American, National Geographic, Quanta Magazine, and Science News. She also has experience with script writing for podcasts, TikToks, and a PBS Terra show.
Faculty