Julia Leonard is a developmental cognitive scientist and an Assistant Professor of Psychology. Dr. Leonard studied Neuroscience and Behavior as an undergraduate at Wesleyan University and finished her Ph.D. in Brain and Cognitive Science from MIT in 2018. She completed Postdoctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania under Angela Duckworth, Martha Farah, and Joe Kable.
Dr. Leonard describes falling in love with the scientific process in her high school biology class. She found herself asking theoretical and applicable questions about the nature of things, people, animals—she was an avid arachnid observer in high school—and she credits teachers who gave her agency in her own learning process with fostering this seemingly boundless curiosity. In fact, though she was interested in pursuing medical school, her post-bac/graduate-level experiences solidified her love of research and encouraged her to pursue it fully.