Personal Statement

I am a Senior Research Scientist, Cognitive Studies in Medicine and Public Health at the New York Academy of Medicine. I hold a BSc in Biochemistry and Microbiology from Otago University in New Zealand and an MA and Ph.D. in Educational and Cognitive Psychology (Medical Cognition) from McGill University in Montreal. As Professor of Medicine and the director of the Cognitive Science Center at McGill, my early research focused on scientific foundations for medical and health education, particularly in cognitive foundations of medical decision-making. Subsequently, I expanded these research activities with an informatics focus at Columbia, Arizona State Universities, and the University of Texas-Houston. Adjunct appointments as a professor at NY Psychiatric Institute (Columbia), Computer Science (ASU), and Behavioral Health Science (UTH) allowed me to explore the relationship between Cognitive, behavioral, and information sciences in the biomedical domain.

An elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Academy of Social Sciences), the American College of Medical Informatics, and the New York Academy of Medicine, I received the annual Swedish "Woman of Science" award. I received an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of Victoria to recognize my contributions through cognitive studies in health informatics. I was recently awarded the 2021AMIA William W. Stead Award for Thought Leadership in Informatics for bringing cognitive science to biomedical informatics (cognitive informatics). I am on the editorial board of Intelligence-Based Medicine. I am a Springer series editor of Cognitive Informatics and Healthcare and Biomedicine books, past an associate editor of the Journal of Biomedical Informatics and an assistant editor of AI in Medicine. I have served on the editorial boards of Medical Decision Making, Methods of Information and Medicine, the Journal of Experimental Psychology, Topics in Cognitive Science, and Computers in Biology and Medicine.

In my 35-year career dedicated to academic and clinical research and education, I spent the first 18 on research related to cognitive mechanisms underlying human performance in health care and medical decision-making. The last two decades have been spent working on human cognition in health care, addressing cognitive issues in biomedical informatics (human-computer interaction, cognitive design, decision support, distributed cognition, and team decision-making, especially in critical care settings). After moving to the US in 2000, I became the principal investigator on two R01 awards. Both focused on cognitive decision-making and errors, one in a critical care setting (NLM) and another on young adults' sexual risk-taking behaviors (NIMH). With awards from the Science Foundation Arizona and the Office of National Coordinators (ONC) in Washington, I forged a closer tie between cognitive psychological principles and health information technology. I completed a successful 5-year James S. McDonnell Foundation research project on Complexity and Error in Health Care. I received another R01 from AHRQ related to the Impact of Meaningful Use on Clinical Workflow in Emergency Departments. My next research phase focuses on cognition and mental health with an initial R18 award from NIMH. Over my career, I have mentored 40 master's students, 25 doctoral students, and 20 post-doctoral and research fellows. I have over 350 scholarly publications spanning biomedical Informatics, education, clinical, and cognitive science journals, and I am an editor or co-editor of six books. I continue to pursue expanding my research interests to less developed nations.

Education

• Ph.D., Department of Educational Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, (1980-81), Graduated, late 1981
  Area of Concentration: Medical Cognition with a focus on reasoning and with development of expertise in medicine
• M.A., Department of Educational Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, (1978-80), Graduated early 1980
  Area of Concentration: Medical Evaluation with a focus on the relationship between basic and clinical sciences
• Post Graduate Diploma in Biochemistry, Faculty of Science, Otago University, New Zealand. (1968-69) Graduated 1977
  Area of Concentration: Metabolic Biochemistry: Impact of ATPase on Endonuclease I in E Coli
• B.Sc., Biochemistry & Microbiology, Faculty of Science, Otago University, New Zealand, (1966-68) Graduated late 1976

Research Interests

• Medical cognition
• Cognitive Informatics
• Medical decision-making and reasoning
• Patient safety and medical errors
• Human-computer interaction
• Cognitive assessment of learning and instruction