Dr. Barbara Shinn Cunningham

Biography

Barbara Shinn-Cunningham joined Carnegie Mellon University in 2018 as the director of the Neuroscience Institute and holds courtesy appointments in Psychology. Before joining CMU, she spent 21 years on the faculty at Boston University. Her research combines behavioral, neuroimaging, and computational methods to understand the brain processes involved in sound perception. Shinn-Cunningham has received numerous honors, including the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship and the Whitaker Foundation award, as well as being recognized as a Vannevar Bush Fellow. In 2019, she accepted the Helmholtz-Rayleigh Interdisciplinary Silver Medal for her contributions to Psychological Acoustics, Physiological Acoustics, and Architectural Acoustics. She received a biennial Mentorship Award from the Acoustical Society of America and is a Fellow of both the ASA and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. In addition to her research, she has served as an associate member of the National Research Council and was elected vice president of the ASA governing board. Currently, she is a Senior Editor for eLife and serves as Treasurer/Secretary for the Association for Research in Otolaryngology. Shinn-Cunningham has authored more than 200 scientific articles and is recognized for her expertise in spatial hearing and auditory attention.

Research Interests