Growing up in Science with Jeremy Wolfe

What is it to be a scientist? How does one become a scientist? Growing Up in Science is a conversation series with academics at different levels of their career focusing on the sometimes short, sometimes long and winding roads behind the “official CV”.

At each event, we will have an open conversation (interview) with one faculty member representing science in its broad spectrum. We will cover topics such as dealing with expectations (your own and others’), the role of luck/coincidence in scientific discovery, impostor syndrome, procrastination, and conflicts with advisors. Join us for a conversation about the human factors that are universal undercurrents of working in academia but that too often remain unspoken.

On Thursday, February 14, the interview partner is Prof. Jeremy Wolfe,  PhD, Professor of Ophthalmology and Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School, Director, Visual Attention Lab and Department of Surgery, Brigham and Women's Hospital 

The Official CV

Jeremy Wolfe graduated summa cum laude from Princeton in 1977 with a degree in Psychology and went on to obtain his PhD in 1981 from MIT, studying with Richard Held. His PhD thesis was entitled "On Binocular Single Vision". Wolfe remained at MIT until 1991. During that period, he published papers on binocular rivalry, visual aftereffects, and accommodation. In the late 1980s, the focus of the lab shifted to visual attention. Since that time, his research has focused on visual search and visual attention with a particular interest in socially important search tasks in areas such as medical image perception (e.g. cancer screening) and security (e.g. baggage screening). His most cited works concern the development of his Guided Search theory.  In 1991, Wolfe moved to Brigham and Women's Hospital where he is Director of the Visual Attention Lab. At Harvard Medical School, he is Professor of Ophthalmology and Professor of Radiology. His work is currently funded by the US National Institutes of Health and the Army Research Office. He has published over 190 peer-reviewed papers, 1 textbook, and 38 book chapters. Wolfe taught Psychology courses (mostly Introductory Psychology) at MIT & Harvard for 25 years. In the early days of MOOCs, his lectures spent a year near the top of downloads on iTunesU,

Jeremy Wolfe is Immediate Past-President of the Federation of Associations for Behavioral and Brain Sciences (FABBS) and editor of the newest Psychonomic Society journal, Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications. He is past-Chair of the Governing Board of the Psychonomic Society and immediate past-Editor the journal, Attention, Perception and Psychophysics. Wolfe has been President of the Eastern Psychological Association, Chair of Division 3 of the American Psychological Association, and he was Chair of the NRC Panel on Soldier Systems (Army Research Lab Technical Assessment Board). He is on the Governing Board of the Vision Sciences Society. He won the Baker Memorial Prize for teaching at MIT in 1989. He is a fellow of the AAAS, the American Psychological Assocation (Div. 1, 3, 6, & 21), the American Psychological Society, and a member of the Society for Experimental Psychologists. He lives in Newton, Mass.