founder & Director
Dr. Paula A. Tallal
Paula A. Tallal, Ph.D., received her Ph.D. from Cambridge University, and has previously spent her academic career on the faculty of Johns Hopkins, UCSD and Rutgers and is currently on the faculty at the Salk Institute and UCSD. Over the past 30 years Tallal has led NIH and NSF multidisciplinary research teams and published 250 papers on the neurobiological basis of speech, language and reading. She co-founded Scientific Learning Corporation in 1996 and continues to serve on the Board of Directors. Tallal is a cognitive neuroscientist and board-certified clinical psychologist who has authored over 200 professional publications and holds several patents. She was selected by the Library of Congress to be the Commentator for the Field of Psychology at its Bicentennial Celebration and earned the Thomas Alva Edison Patent Prize for her work leading to the development of Fast ForWord software. Dr. Tallal received her bachelor’s degree from NYU and her Ph.D. from Cambridge. She is also a participant in many scientific advisory boards and governmental committees on developmental language disorders and learning disabilities.