Home Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize Jury Members

Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize Jury Members

Terrie Moffitt – Chairwoman

Terrie E. Moffitt, Ph.D., is the Nannerl O. Keohane University Professor of Psychology at Duke University, and Professor of Social Development at King’s College London. Her expertise is in the areas of longitudinal methods, developmental theory, clinical mental health research, neuropsychology, and genomics in behavioral science. She is uncovering the consequences of a lifetime of mental and behavioral disorder on processes of aging.

Dorret I Boomsma

Dorret I Boomsma is Full Professor at the Department of Biological Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her research focuses on better understanding the etiology of variation in complex human traits, including the influence of (epi)genetics. She studies development, growth and cognition in children and on somatic and mental disorders across the lifespan, including cardiovascular diseases, and depression. She specializes in genetics, omics- and twin studies and has created a database of over 200,000 twins and their family members in The Netherlands, which has been used for thousands of twin studies.

Pierre Dillenbourg

Pierre Dillenbourg is professor in learning technologies in the School of Computer & Communication Science, and Associate Vice-President for Education at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). Along with EPFL colleagues, he launched the Swiss EdTech Collider in 2017, an incubator with 80 start-ups in learning technologies. He co-founded 5 start-ups, does consulting missions in the corporate world, and joined the board of several companies or institutions. In 2018, he co-founded LEARN, the EPFL Center of Learning Sciences that brings together local initiatives in educational innovation.

Marcus Hasselhorn

Marcus Hasselhorn is Director of the Center of Education and Human Development, Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education (DIPF) in Frankfurt. His research focuses on educational psychology, differential developmental psychology and special education. He leads projects on learning disabilities and is interested in the possibilities of changing and influencing cognitive learning prerequisites as well as in early education and school readiness.

Issac Mbiti

Isaac M. Mbiti is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. He is also a research affiliate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), Jameel Abdul Latif Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), the Institute for Labor Economics (IZA), and the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD). He serves as a scientific director at JPAL Africa and is also a co-editor at the Journal of Human Resources. His research focuses on African economic development with particular interest in examining the role of education policies such as free primary education and teacher performance pay programs, as well as the potential for new innovations and technologies to spur the development process.

Nora Newcombe

Nora S. Newcombe is the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology at Temple University and currently serves as Editor of Psychological Science in the Public interest, an APS journal. Her research focuses on spatial cognition and development, as well as the development of autobiographical and episodic memory. Dr. Newcombe is the author of numerous chapters, articles, and books, including Making Space with Janellen Huttenlocher (published by the MIT Press, 2000).

Michael Shanahan

Michael Shanahan is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Zurich. He is the former Jacobs Center Director (2015-2021) and has held professorships at Penn State University and UNC-Chapel Hill. He furthermore was Hewlett Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford (1998/1999). His main research interests include life course sociology theory and methods, with a focus on individual differences in the life course, particularly genetic factors.