Moira R. Dillon

Moira Dillon
Assistant Professor of Psychology, New York University

Moira Dillon is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at New York University and the director of the Lab for the Developing Mind. Using cognitive, developmental, and computational approaches, Dillon’s work gains insight from the full range of human encounters with geometry, from the basic spatial sensitivities of infants to the untutored use of spatial symbols and language by children to the high-level spatial concepts of adults. Dillon broadens and deepens this exploration to ask how mathematical formalisms might have been ignited in the first geometers like Euclid and how they might be reignited in the minds of young learners. In addition, she asks how basic mechanisms of perception and cognition about spaces, objects, agents, and social partners might even shape our cultural production of pictorial art.

Dillon is a 2019 recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER award and a Jacobs Foundation Early Career Fellow. She’s also a developmental psychologist on an interdisciplinary team evaluating machine common sense for a project funded by DARPA.


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