vailsymposium

Dr. Jessica Payne holds appointments at Harvard Medical School and the University of Notre Dame, where she is currently Professor of Psychology and Andrew J. McKenna Family Collegiate Chair. She is also the Director of the Sleep, Stress, and Memory (SAM) Lab. Payne’s research focuses on how sleep and stress independently and interactively influence human memory, emotion, creativity, and performance. She teaches various courses in Psychology and Neurobiology, including a popular course entitled “The Sleeping Brain” for which she won Harvard University’s Bok Center Award for teaching excellence and Notre Dame’s Frank O’Malley award for undergraduate teaching and service, and the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. She also won the Laird Cermak Award for her contribution to memory research, the Early Career Award from the Psychonomic Society, which is “the home for scientists who study how the mind works”, and was elected a Kavil Fellow with the National Academy of Sciences. Kavli fellows are young researchers who have already made recognized contributions to science, and 150 Kavli fellows have been elected into the National Academy of Sciences and 10 have been awarded Nobel Prizes.

Payne is also dedicated to applying her research findings to business organizations, striving to help leaders understand how to work with, rather than against, the natural abilities of the human brain. Her work has been profiled in the New York Times, Businessweek and MSN, Scientific American, the Huffington Post, CNN, USA Today, Bloomberg Business Week, National Geographic, and many other media outlets. Payne was the H. Smith Richardson Jr. Fellow at Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) in Greensboro, NC, and she continues to help CCL incorporate neuroscience and sleep research into their leadership programs. Dr. Payne also serves on the Advisory Board of the Neuroleadership Institute, and on the Medical Advisory Board for Humana, Inc. Dr. Payne’s postdoctoral fellowship was split between Harvard Medical School’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard University’s Psychology Department. She holds a Ph.D. in Psychology/Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Arizona, a Master’s Degree in Experimental Psychology from Mount Holyoke College, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from the University of San Diego.