Director: Dr. Iris Oved

irisoved at gmail.com, irisoved at cs.arizona.edu

Dr. Iris Oved grew up in AZ with the public school system.  Her life was transformed when she entered the University of Arizona in 1996 and was introduced to philosophy and cognitive science by some of the top scholars in the field. She quickly took on an interdisciplinary major in Philosophy, Psychology, and Symbolic Systems, and joined numerous labs studying aspects of perception, language, and artificial intelligence. After college she went on to earn a PhD in Philosophy with a Cognitive Science minor from Rutgers University, one of the highest ranked programs in the field.  Her dissertation work was on concept-acquisition and its role in high-level cognition.  After receiving her PhD in 2009, Dr. Oved came back to the University of Arizona, where she spent two years as a postdoctoral research fellow in a cognitive robotics lab, helping to design curious robots that learn about the world in much the way that scientists and children do, by formulating and testing hypotheses. She has created the Paradox Center as a feedback loop, bringing insights about high-level cognition directly into K-12 education and returning observations about children’s high-level thinking back into the research field.  Read more about Dr. Oved’s research background at http://sites.google.com/site/irisoved/

 

Support Staff

Anne Friedman: Grant- proposal writer. She has 20+ years of grant-writing experience with Education, Medical, and High-Tech industries, with awards ranging from $40,00 to $1.5 Million. She is also the author of 14 publications on curriculum material for K-6 education, sold to school districts nation-wide. Anne Friedman was also director of the Phoenix Coalition for Youth and Families at the University of Arizona, which consisted of 23 community-based agencies serving at-risk and under-privilaged children in central Phoenix.

Karyn White: Assessment Technology Incorporated. Karyn White has a Masters of Art in Curriculum and Technology, focusing on meta-cognition. The center plans to use the services of Assessment Technology Incorporated, which will design pre- and post-tests for the development of critical thinking skills, and provide software and online platforms for creating and disseminating lessons.

Barbara Sussman: Counselor for at-risk students. She has over 35 years of experience as a special education teacher, specializing in mathematics, in public schools in New York City and in Tucson.

Dr. Alexander Perlis:  IT consultant.  Alex is a freelance research mathematician and software engineer.  He holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Arizona, and has taught math in college and high school. He is passionate about non-profit administration and helping to bring about positive changes within our communities.  He has been a board member at BICAS, a non-profit bicycle organization in Tucson, and he currently serves on the board of Frederick l’Ecole des Arts in Arnaudville, LA.

Board of Advisors

Dr. Thomas Wartenberg:  Philosophy Department, Mount Holyoke University.  Specializing in Philosophy of Art and Philosophy for Children.

Dr. Maughn Gregory:  Department of Educational Foundations , Montclair State University.  Specializing in Education Philosophy.

Dr. David Kennedy: Department of Educational Foundations , Montclair State University.  Specializing in Philosophy of Childhood.

Dr. Karen Spear-Ellinwood:  Education Research, University of Arizona. Specializing in education of Scientific Thinking.

Dr. Keith Lehrer: Philosophy Department, University of Arizona. Specializing in Philosophy of Art, Theory of Knowledge, Philosophy of Mind.

Dr. Stew Cohen: Philosophy Department, University of Arizona. Specializing in Theory of Knowledge.