On 1 October 2014, the Rafael del Pino Foundation organised the Keynote Lecture by Dr Patricia Kuhl and Dr Andrew Meltzoff, "Brain development and early childhood education, the basis for the future of nations".
Patricia K. Kuhl is the Bezos Family Foundation Professor for Early Childhood Learning at the University of Washington, Co-Director of the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences and Director of the NSF-funded Science of Learning Center at the University of Washington. She is an expert in language and auditory sciences and specialises in language acquisition and its neural basis; she has also conducted research on language development in autism and on speech recognition systems.
Professor Kuhl is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Rodin Academy and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. She was awarded the Silver Medal of the Acoustical Society of America in 1997 and in 2005 she received the Kenneth Craik Research Award from Cambridge University. She has twice received the University of Washington's Faculty Lectureship Award, as well as the University of Minnesota's Outstanding Achievement Award. In addition, he is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Acoustical Society of America, the Cognitive Science Society and the American Psychological Society. In 2008 he received the Acoustical Society of America's Gold Medal for his work on learning and the brain and, in 2011, the IPSEN Fondation's Jean-Louis Signoret Neuropsychology Prize.
Andrew N. Meltzoff is the Job and Gertrud Tamaki Professor at the University of Washington and Co-Director of the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences at the University of Washington. Professor Meltzoff received his B.A. from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from Oxford University. He is considered an international expert on infant and child development. His findings on infant imitation have revolutionised the understanding of early cognition, personality and brain development.
Dr. Meltzoff is a recipient of the MERIT Award from the National Institute of Health and, in 2005, received the Society for Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics Research Excellence Award as well as the Kenneth Craik Award in Psychology from Cambridge University. Dr. Meltzoff is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society.
