Board & Team Boon

Matthew H. Schneps

Dr. Matthew H. Schneps carries out research and programs in the field of educational neuroscience, focusing on how neurological effects related to reading and perception influence students’ abilities to perform in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. He is active in public outreach and his work in this area includes a multimedia production teaching concepts in neuroscience to K-12 teachers (http://www.learner.org/courses/neuroscience/). A member of the Scheller Teacher Education Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he investigates methods for using emerging technologies such as smart devices and virtual reality to advance learning. As a Research Professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMB) he investigates how individual differences in cognitive abilities, including reading, interacts with students’ abilities to extract information from graphs and other multimedia presentations, research funded by the National Science Foundation. Prior to coming to MIT and UMB, Schneps was for 35-years a senior member of the Science Education Department at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). There, Schneps founded the Science Media Group, a television production group responsible for numerous nationally broadcast productions related to science learning, including the multi-award-winning “A Private Universe” on children’s ideas in science. In 2010-2012, Schneps was awarded the George E. Burch Fellowship in Theoretic Medicine and Affiliated Sciences by the Smithsonian Institution. Schneps received his PhD in Physics from MIT in 1979.