WELCOME

The Department of Cognitive Sciences at UC Irvine has a tradition of excellence in quantitative approaches to understanding the brain, perception, cognition and behavior. The department maintains its historic strengths in mathematical psychology, and has seen them expand to include computational approaches to studying cognition. The department has also grown a strong and broad research program and graduate concentration in cognitive neuroscience, with expertise ranging from language and memory to brain-computer interfaces. The department continues to specialize in vision and auditory research, and has newer research areas in the language sciences, cognitive development, and cognitive robotics. 

Our department has more than 1,000 undergraduates and 60 graduate students, and the cognitive psychology graduate program is ranked 13th in the nation. The Department has a strong focus on research, with most of our 23 faculty holding one or more large extramural grants. Our faculty includes 4 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 9 fellows and 2 William James fellows of the American Psychological Society, 8 American Psychological Association fellows, and 5 fellows of the Society for Experimental Psychology.

Cognitive science is an inherently multi-disciplinary field, and the department has affiliations with other departments, institutes and centers on campus. These are in areas such as the biological sciences, machine learning and statistics, and include the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences, the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, the Center for Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, the Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders, and the Center for Hearing Research.

Graduate-level training is offered in the following areas: (i) Cognition and Information Processing, (ii) Mathematical Behavioral Science, (iii) Perception and Action, (iv) Language, and (v) Cognitive Neuroscience.

Undergraduate training is offered through a major in Psychology.