The Concord Consortium is delighted to announce our new Chief Learning Scientist, Janet Kolodner. She is Regents’ Professor Emerita in Computing and Cognitive Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and previously was on loan to the National Science Foundation from 2010 to 2014.

Since the 1970s, Janet’s research has addressed a wide variety of issues in learning, memory, and problem solving, both in computers and in people. She pioneered case-based reasoning (CBR), which allows a computer to reason and learn from its experiences. Later she used CBR’s cognitive model to guide the design of science curriculum for middle school. In Learning by Design™ (LBD), students learn science in the context of trying to achieve design challenges. LBD curriculum units and the LBD approach are incorporated into the three-year middle school science curriculum called Project-Based Inquiry Science™ (PBIS), used by tens of thousands of students.

Janet is founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Learning Sciences and a founder and first Executive Officer of the International Society for the Learning Sciences. Janet earned her B.A. in math and computer science at Brandeis and her MS and Ph.D. in computer science at Yale.

Chad Dorsey, President and CEO of the Concord Consortium, says, “We are thrilled to welcome Janet to guide research efforts across our organization as we open new doors in the world of technology integration, learning analytics and more. She brings a wealth of expertise in cognitive science that will help us frame new projects and conceive new research areas.”