Priya Kalra

I will be graduating this month with a doctorate from Harvard Graduate School of Education. My dissertation research was carried out in collaboration with Amy S. Finn at the Gabrieli Lab at MIT. I am actively seeking and applying for postdoctoral research opportunities.

My background is in cognitive science (BA UC Berkeley '04) and neuroimaging (M.Sc. Brunel University '08) and I am interested in how abstract/relational knowledge is acquired and represented. I think my research interest falls at the intersection or overlap of the following research topics: Abstraction, Analogy, Categorization,Conceptual representation, Generalization, Implicit learning, Induction, Knowledge representation, Relational reasoning, Semantic memory (organization of).

Ultimately, I believe that findings in this research area could have profound educational implications, and I am interested in pursuing educational applications in the long-term.

I am also an experienced teacher in introductory-intermediate statistics/quantitative methods for social sciences. I believe that a conceptual understanding of research methods is critical for both researchers and consumers of research. Observing and reflecting on how students learn in my classes not only helps me improve my teaching, but also informs my research interests.