Martha Farah grew up in New York City and went to college at MIT, where she earned undergraduate degrees in Metallurgy and Philosophy in 1977. She studied Experimental Psychology at Harvard, earning a Ph.D. in 1983 and going on to postdoctoral studies in Neuropsychology at MIT and the Boston VA Hospital. She has taught at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pennsylvania, where she is now Walter H. Annenberg Professor in the Natural Sciences and Director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience.

Professor Farah’s work spans many topics within cognitive neuroscience, including visual perception, attention, mental imagery, semantic memory, reading, prefrontal function, and most recently, neuroethics. Her publications include: Visual Agnosia, (MIT Press, 1990; 2nd edition, 2004), The Cognitive Neuroscience of Vision (Blackwell, 2000), and the edited volume: Patient-based Approaches to Cognitive Neuroscience (MIT Press, 1999; 2nd edition 2006), and she is the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience Associate Editor for Neuroethics. She is a recipient of the American Psychological Association’s Early Career Contribution Award, the National Academy of Science’s Troland Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Professor of psychology & Director, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience University of Pennsylvania