Kristen M. Kennedy

Biography

Dr. Kristen Kennedy is known for her research in the area of cognitive neuroscience of aging, a field that studies the adult lifespan to determine which characteristics determine how well people age, both cognitively and neurally. Dr. Kennedy studies the ways in which healthy functioning of the brain relates to the aging of the brain’s structural health or integrity. Before integrating brain structure function to study aging, Dr. Kennedy’s major area of expertise was in understanding how brain structure (e.g., brain volume and white matter connectivity) was altered by aging and how it relates to cognitive performance. Dr. Kennedy is one of the few researchers to have been awarded a K99/R00 “Pathway to Independence” Award from the National Institute on Aging and she has received a dissertation research award by the American Psychological Association for her dissertation. Dr. Kennedy in 2012 was named a Young Research Fellow by the Greater Dallas Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association and in 2013 was named a “Rising Star” by the American Psychological Society. She currently serves as an editor for the journal NeuroImage. She earned a bachelor’s degree at Hendrix College, a master’s degree at Emporia State University, and her PhD at Wayne State University.

Research Interest

Memory and cognition, quantitative models, neuroimaging, genomics, Nonverbal cognition with specific projects focused on human aging and memory, long-term memory for faces, perception of faces, eyewitness memory, and music cognition.