Barbara Shinn-Cunningham

Last updated
Barbara G. Shinn-Cunningham
Alma mater Brown University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Spouse Robert Kevin Cunningham
Awards ASA Silver Medal, Society for Neuroscience Bernice Grafstein Award, Acoustical Society of America Mentorship Award
Scientific career
Fields Auditory neuroscience, auditory science, electrical engineering, cognitive neuroscience
Institutions Carnegie Mellon University, Boston University
Thesis Adaptation to supernormal auditory localization cues in an auditory virtual environment  (1994)
Doctoral advisor Nathaniel I. Durlach

Barbara Shinn-Cunningham is an American bioengineer and neuroscientist. She became the Glen de Vries Dean of the Mellon College of Science [1] at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in 2025. Prior to this, she served as the founding director of CMU's Neuroscience Institute. [2] At CMU, she is Professor of Auditory Neuroscience with appointments in the Neuroscience Institute, Psychology, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering.

Contents

Education

Shinn-Cunningham attended Brown University as an undergraduate, where she earned an Sc.B. in Electrical Engineering. She earned both her master's degree [3] and Ph.D. [4] from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Career

Prior to moving to Carnegie Mellon, where Shinn-Cunningham runs the Laboratory in Multisensory Neuroscience, Shinn-Cunningham was a professor of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University (BU). [5] She worked at Bell Communications Research, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and Sensimetrics [6] before joining the faculty at BU. She is an auditory neuroscientist best known for her work on attention and the cocktail party problem, sound localization, and the effects of room acoustics and reverberation on hearing. [7]

Shinn-Cunningham's lab uses a range of techniques to understand neural coding and perception, including psychoacoustics, cortical electroencephalography and magnetoencephalography, functional near-infrared spectroscopy, pupillometry, comparative neuroscience, and computational modeling. She also collaborates with researchers conducting functional magnetic resonance imaging and neurophysiology. She is particularly interested in how sensory and cognitive processes work together to allow people to understand overlapping conversations. [8]

She has held numerous leadership positions in professional organizations, including as President and as Vice President of the Acoustical Society of America, [9] Treasurer and Member of Council of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, and Chair of the AUD NIH study section. She regularly serves on advisory and review panels in academia and beyond. [10] [11] She has served as a Senior Editor for eLife and on the editorial boards of the Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, the Journal of Neurophysiology , and Auditory Perception and Cognition.

Awards

Shinn-Cunningham is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering [12] [13] and the Acoustical Society of America (ASA). [14] She has received fellowships from the Whitaker Foundation, [15] the Alfred P Sloan Foundation [16] and the National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellows program (now known as the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship Program). [17] She was the recipient of the biennial Mentorship Award from the Acoustical Society of America in 2013. [18] She was a member of the Telluride Auditory Attention Team that received the 2021 Misha Mahowald Prize for Neuromorphic Engineering for their work to monitor auditory attentional selection through electroencephalography. [19]

She was the eighth woman to receive any ASA Silver Medal and the first to receive the Helmholtz-Rayleigh Interdisciplinary Silver Medal (2019), which she was awarded in Psychological and Physiological Acoustics, Speech Communication, and Architectural Acoustics "for contributions to understanding the perceptual, cognitive, and neural bases of speech perception in complex acoustic environments." [20]

In 2020, she was recognized by the Society for Neuroscience as a recipient of the Bernice Grafstein Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Mentoring.

She is a Lifetime National Associate of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences. [21]

Personal life

Shinn-Cunningham is married to Robert Kevin Cunningham, an engineer-scientist who has worked in machine learning, computational vision, and cybersecurity. They have two sons, Nick and Will, born in 1994 and 1996 respectively. She took up saber fencing as an adult. As a member of the 2019 US Veteran Team, [22] she participated in the World Veteran Fencing Championships in Cairo, Egypt, where she was a member of the bronze medal-winning US Women's Saber Team and placed seventh in the individual Women Vet50 category. She is an avid oboist and English horn player.

Selected publications

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References

  1. ↑ Carnegie Mellon University. "Barbara Shinn-Cunningham Named Mellon College of Science Dean – News – Carnegie Mellon University". www.cmu.edu. Retrieved 3 January 2025.
  2. ↑ Carnegie Mellon University. "Barbara Shinn-Cunningham To Lead Carnegie Mellon's New Neuroscience Institute – News – Carnegie Mellon University". www.cmu.edu. Retrieved 31 May 2019.
  3. ↑ "Barton MIT Libraries' Catalog / M.S. Thesis B. G. Shinn-Cunningham". library.mit.edu. Retrieved 31 May 2019.
  4. ↑ "Barton MIT Libraries' Catalog / PhD thesis B. G. Shinn-Cunningham". library.mit.edu. Retrieved 31 May 2019.
  5. ↑ "Barbara G. Shinn-Cunningham, Ph.D. » Biomedical Engineering | Boston University". Bu.edu. Retrieved 2014-06-12.
  6. ↑ "Sensimetrics Corporation". Sens.com. Retrieved 2015-03-08.
  7. ↑ Barbara Shinn-Cunningham. "Barbara G. Shinn-Cunningham » Public Relations | Blog Archive | Boston University". Bu.edu. Retrieved 2014-06-12.
  8. ↑ Berdik, Chris (September 29, 2016). "Tuning In". Boston University Research. Boston University. Retrieved 24 October 2016.
  9. ↑ "Past and Present Officers and Members of the Executive Council | ASA". Acousticalsociety.org. Archived from the original on 2017-05-23. Retrieved 2014-06-12.
  10. ↑ "Committee: Panel on Human Factors Science at the Army Research Laboratory". .nationalacademies.org. Retrieved 2014-06-12.
  11. ↑ "Hearing4all – Scientific Advisory Board". Hearing4all.eu. Retrieved 2014-06-12.
  12. ↑ "Barbara Shinn-Cunningham". Aimbe.org. Retrieved 2014-06-12.
  13. ↑ "Four BME Faculty Elected as AIMBE Fellows » Materials Science Engineering | Blog Archive | Boston University". Bu.edu. 2014-02-19. Retrieved 2014-06-12.
  14. ↑ "Boston University HRC :: Barbara Shinn-Cunningham selected for Fellowship in Acoustical Society of America". Bu.edu. 2009-03-01. Retrieved 2014-06-12.
  15. ↑ "The Whitaker Foundation: 1999 Annual Report. Grants Awarded in 1999". Bmesphotos.org. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2014-06-12.
  16. ↑ "Past Fellows". Sloan.org. 2012-07-18. Archived from the original on 2014-11-04. Retrieved 2014-06-12.
  17. ↑ "DoD names engineering, science fellows for research program". EDN. 2008-06-03. Retrieved 2014-06-12.
  18. ↑ "Mentor Award". Acosoc.org. Archived from the original on 2014-10-24. Retrieved 2014-06-12.
  19. ↑ "Mahowald Prize" . Retrieved 10 November 2022.
  20. ↑ Shinn-Cunningham, Barbara G. (March 2019). "Helmholtz-Rayleigh Interdisciplinary Silver Medal in Psychological and Physiological Acoustics, Speech Communication, and Architectural Acoustics 2019: Barbara G. Shinn-Cunningham". The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 145 (3): 1843–1846. Bibcode:2019ASAJ..145.1843S. doi: 10.1121/1.5101687 .
  21. ↑ "Associates | National-Academies.org | Where the Nation Turns for Independent, Expert Advice". Nas.edu. 2012-01-01. Retrieved 2014-06-12.
  22. ↑ "B. Shinn-Cunningham".
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