[CogSci] : Interdisciplinary PhD in Cognitive Science at RIT

[Matt Dye]

The PhD in Cognitive Science<https://www.rit.edu/study/cognitive-science-phd> at Rochester Institute for Technology is a highly interdisciplinary program spanning six of RIT’s eight colleges. We have 29 faculty<https://www.rit.edu/program-directory/6860631> located across 12 academic departments, providing many opportunities for students to explore innovative approaches to the study of the human, animal and machine minds. The following faculty have expressed an interest in recruiting doctoral students for fall 2025:

Dr. Cissi Alm<https://www.rit.edu/clasp/> directs the CLaSP Lab which focuses on human-centered AI, particularly multimodal AI involving NLP, speech, ASL, and dialogue. The lab offers research opportunities for BS, MS, and PhD students and hosts a student research discussant series. Resources include workstations, mobile eye-trackers, WhisperRoom sound booth, cameras for pose tracking, and iMotions software for eye-tracking, facial recognition, GSR, and pulse. Other tools include Shimmer3 sensors, EEG and EMG devices, microphones for speech capture, Bang & Olufsen headphones, and in-house data visualization software, plus tools for computational linguistics and Amazon Echo Dots for research. Current funding will support a deaf and/or proficient ASL user interested in working on ASL prosody, non-manual markers, and disfluencies in collaboration with Dr. Allison Fitch (see below).

Dr. Rain Bosworth<https://www.rit.edu/directory/rgbdls-rain-bosworth> is director of the NTID PLAY Lab<https://www.rit.edu/ntid/playlab>, focusing on development of perception, language and attention in young children.  She and Dr. Allison Fitch (see below) have a three-year grant to study how exploratory and communicative behavior in children is linked with cognitive development.  They are recruiting graduate students to work on a project exploring how deaf and hearing children explore and navigate through play spaces in the Strong Museum of Play.  We welcome students who have background in child development or machine learning and image analysis for body action classification.

Dr. Frances Cooley<https://www.rit.edu/ntid/radlab> uses eye-tracking and behavioral language testing to investigate reading in deaf and hard-of-hearing children and adults. Her work aims to understand the role of deafness and sign language exposure on eye-movement behaviors during reading with the goal of informing early language practices for deaf children to optimize literacy, by studying deaf and hearing individuals who learned ASL before learning to read as well as deaf individuals who learned to read without access to sign language. She welcomes applications from deaf students as well as hearing students who are fluent signers.

Dr. Matt Dye<https://www.rit.edu/ntid/deafxlab/> <https://www.rit.edu/ntid/deafxlab/>investigates how language supports cognitive development, using behavioral and EEG methods to study deaf children and adults, including users of American Sign Language and those with cochlear implants who prefer spoken English. His research aims to understand how early language exposure fosters healthy cognition, guiding interventions to maximize the potential of deaf children. He welcomes applications from deaf students and individuals fluent in a national sign language like ASL.

Dr. Allison Fitch<https://www.pawlabrit.com/> is the director of the PAW (Perception and Acquisition of Words) Lab. She studies the interaction of visual perception and language particularly as it relates to child language acquisition, American Sign Language (ASL), and/or social interaction. She uses eye-tracking, naturalistic observation, and behavioral experiments to answer research questions. The lab is a bimodal bilingual (ASL/English) environment and is affiliated with the SPACE Center<https://www.rit.edu/ntid/space/> at NTID. Current funding will support a deaf and/or proficient ASL user interested in working on ASL prosody, non-manual markers, and disfluencies in collaboration with Dr. Cissi Alm.

Dr. Esa Rantanen<https://www.rit.edu/directory/emrgsh-esa-rantanen> has broad research interests in human factors in complex systems, human performance measurement and modeling, mental workload, decision-making, and human error and reliability, and more specifically in the effects of time pressure and temporal uncertainty on workload and performance and development of cognitive models of human operators’ temporal awareness, which will allow for prediction of their performance under various operational demands, as well as development of methods and standards for human-centered design of successful products and systems. His current projects involve concurrent measurement and representations of human-system interactions and Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) applications in the cybersecurity domain.

Dr. Christopher Thorstenson<https://www.christopherthorstenson.com/> investigates how people infer social information (e.g., emotion, health, personality) from social agents (e.g., human faces, avatars, social robots). He studies visual and social perception of social agents in conventional and extended-reality (VR/AR) environments, with a focus on color appearance.

For more information about applying to our program, please send an email to the Graduate Program Director, Dr. Matt Dye (Matt.Dye at rit.edu<mailto:Matt.Dye at rit.edu>). The priority deadline for fall 2025 admission is January 15, although applications will be considered on a rolling basis if received after that date.


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Matt Dye, PhD

Professor, RIT/NTID

Joint Program Director, PhD in Cognitive Science

Director, RIT Center for Cognitive Science

Rochester Institute of Technology


t: (585) 475-2252

e: mwddls at rit.edu
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