Mahzarin Rustum Banaji Awarded the NSF’s Atkinson Prize in Psychological and Cognitive Sciences

Mahzarin Rustum Banaji, the Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics at Harvard University, was awarded the Atkinson Prize in Psychological and Cognitive Sciences from the National Science Foundation.

Dr. Banaji was recognized for her work in the field of implicit social cognition. Following the establishment of the concept, Professor Banaji and collaborators continued the research to look at the neural underpinnings of implicit bias, examine the origin of bias among young children, and use machine learning approaches to identify algorithmic bias in large language and image collections.

Awarded biennially, the Atkinson Prize is presented with a $100,000 cash award. Banaji hopes it will help move “the basic work in new directions,” while also allowing her to “double down on education about what the mind sciences are revealing.”

Before joining the Harvard faculty in 2002, Dr. Banaji taught at Yale from 1986 to 2002, where she was Ruben Post Halleck Professor of Psychology. She is the co-author of Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People (2013).

Dr. Banaji is a graduate of Nizam College in Hyderabad, India. She earned a master’s degree in psychology from Osmania University in Hyderabad and a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in experimental social psychology from Ohio State University.