Prof. Dr. Kenneth Pugh

Prof. Kenneth Pugh

President and Director of Research at Haskins Laboratories, Yale University, and University of Connecticut, USA

Dr. Pugh is the President and Director of Research at Haskins Laboratories, a Yale University and University of Connecticut affiliated inter-disciplinary institute, dedicated to the investigation of the biological bases of language. He also holds academic appointments as a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Connecticut, and as an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Yale University, and as an Associate Professor, Department of Diagnostic Radiology at Yale University School of Medicine. His research program over the last two decades employs integrated genetic, neuroimaging, and cognitive methods to explicate the brain bases attention, memory and cognition with special focus on typical and atypical language, and reading development in children. Dr. Pugh founded, and also directs, the Haskins Global Literacy Hub, an international and interdisciplinary collaborative that brings together scientists, practitioners, educators, policy makers, and education technology specialists with the broad goal of improving language and literacy outcomes for children across languages and cultures.  A key focus of the Hub is to better understand how early neurocognitive development impacts later educational outcomes, and especially  how children from under-resourced environments can be adversely effected by stressors associated with poverty (including nutritional issues, stress, and exposure to environmental toxins among other things). The goal of this hub is to design more effective birth-to-eight years interventions to mitigate risk and improve literacy and other academic outcomes.

In his professional work Dr. Pugh also serves in a number of advisory roles internationally, including the Scientific Advisory Board for the International Dyslexia Association, the Scientific Advisory Panel for Dyslexia International in Paris, the Board of Visitors for the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh, and the Scientific Advisory Council for the Child Mind Institute in New York. Dr. Pugh served as a Member of the Language and Communications Study Section at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and also served as a member of the “Committee on the Learning Sciences: Foundations and Applications to Adolescent and Adult Literacy” at the National Research Council of the National Academies. In 2017, Dr. Pugh received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) MERIT Award from the National Child Health and Human Development Council Award. This award recognizes outstanding contributions to science with sustained NIH funding. In May 2019 Dr. Pugh received an Honorary Doctorate degree in Psychology from the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland.

Contemplative background: At the age of 16 Dr. Pugh began seven years of training as a Jain Monk (living both in the U.S. and in India). This early immersion in meditation practices and in the formal study of Jain philosophy (with its elevated emphasis on non-violence, ethics, logic, and epistemology) have shaped his approach to the study of brain and mind.

 

 

 

 

Representative publications (from > 100):

Pugh, K. R., McCardle, P., & Stutzman, A. (2017). Global approaches to early learning research and practice: An introduction. In Kenneth R. Pugh, Peggy McCardle, & Annie Stutz-man (Eds.), Global Approaches to Early Learning Research and Practice. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development. 158, 7–10.

Pugh, K.R., Shaywitz, B., Constable, T., Shaywitz, S., Skudlarski, P., Fulbright, R., Bronen, R., Shankweiler, D., Katz, L., Fletcher, J., & Gore, J. (1996). Cerebral organization of component processes in reading.  Brain, 119, 1221-1238.

Pugh, K. R., Frost, S. J., Rothman, D. L., Hoeft, F., Del Tufo, S. N., Mason, G. F., Molfese, P. J., Mencl, W. E., Grigorenko, E. L., Landi, N., Preston, J. L., Jacobsen, L., Seidenberg, M. S., & Fulbright, R. K. (2014). Glutamate and choline levels predict individual differences in reading ability in emergent readers. Journal of Neuroscience, 34(11), 4082-4089. PMCID: PMC3951703

Rueckl, J., Paz-Alonso, P., Molfese, P., Kuo,WJ., Bick, A., Frost, S., Hancock, R., Wu, D., Mencl, WE., Duñabeitia, J., Lee, JR., Oliver, M., Zevin, J., Hoeft, F., Carreiras, M., Tzeng, O., Pugh, K.R., Frost, R. (2015) Universal brain signature of proficient reading: Evidence from four contrasting languages PNAS 2015, 112(50) 155510-15515, doi:10.1073/pnas.1509321112