Mark Johnson is Professor of Experimental Psychology, Head of the Department of Psychology at Cambridge, and a Fellow of King’s College. He obtained his BSc in Biological Sciences with honours in Psychology from the University of Edinburgh, and his PhD from Cambridge (King’s College). In between two periods as a Research Scientist at the Medical Research Council’s Cognitive Development Unit in London (1985-89 and 1994-98), he was Associate Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Carnegie Mellon University, USA. In 1997 he moved with MRC funding to Birkbeck, University of London, and established the Centre for Brain & Cognitive Development.

Johnson has published over 400 journal papers and 10 books on brain and cognitive development in human infants, children and in other species. His laboratory currently focuses on typical, at-risk and atypical functional brain development in human infants and toddlers using a variety of different brain imaging, cognitive, behavioural, genetic and computational modelling techniques. He is an elected fellow of several academic societies, including the Association for Psychological Science (2004), the Cognitive Science Society (2012), the British Academy (2011), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2019). He is also recipient of awards such as the Queen’s Anniversary Prize (2006), the BPS President’s Award (2008), the EPS mid-career award (2009), the Huttenlocher Prize (2015), the William Thierry Preyer Award (2017), and the APS Mentor Award (2019).