Nancy J. Nersessian

At its core, my research concerns creativity and innovation in science, in engineering, and in architectural design. I try to understand the cognitive, social, and cultural processes that lead to innovation. I understand creativity as a problem-solving process, which, in science, often implicates conceptual change. I seek to develop accounts of how the dynamic and evolving interplay of cognition and the environments in which problem-solving take place support and sustain innovative practices. A major focus of my research is how the development of novel modeling methods – conceptual, physical, and computational – advance the epistemic aims of scientists: I have examined such “model-based reasoning” in physics (historical) and in the bioengineering sciences (contemporary).

My work brings together and integrates methodologies, conceptual frameworks, and theoretical analyses from philosophy of science, history of science, and cognitive science. My analyses draw from four sources: 1) empirical data from historical records, experimental studies, and ethnographic observations and interviews of “science-in-action” in research labs; 2) concepts and analyses from various fields in the cognitive sciences; 3) literature on scientific practices in the science studies fields; and 4) my own theoretical analyses, in on-going development. To bring together this wide range of theory, data, and methods, I have been working with research teams that over the years have consisted of philosophers, historians of science, psychologists, computer scientists, anthropologists, architects, cognitive scientists, and learning scientists. I have also worked together with science and engineering faculty to design and develop undergraduate and graduate learning environments that encourage and support creativity and innovation in contemporary interdisciplinary contexts.

I am Regents’ Professor of Cognitive Science Emerita at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Visiting Scholar, Learning Sciences, the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a member of the Mind, Brain, and Behavior Program. In 2011 I received the Inaugural Patrick Suppes Prize in Philosophy of Science by the American Philosophical Society and in 2012, along with my co-authors, the William James Book Award by the American Psychological Association.