Nicholas Judd is a cognitive neuroscientist examining how environmental factors influence brain and cognitive development in children. In addition to his Pro Futura Scientia Fellowship, he is a recipient of the Jacobs Foundation Fellowship (2025–2027) for his work in childhood development and the eScience Fellowship (2024–2025) for his work in open science. His interdisciplinary research merges psychology, economics, sociology, and neuroscience to identify the causal impacts of different environmental exposures on neural and cognitive outcomes.

Judd’s work investigates how modifiable environmental factors such as education, pollution, and resource scarcity contribute to disparities in children’s development. Understanding these processes is crucial, as early neural and cognitive differences have lifelong ramifications. A better understanding of the causes of these initial differences will inform policy, allowing us to promote beneficial and mitigate harmful environmental effects.

His current work leverages natural experiments to study how different environments impact the brain (e.g., Judd & Kievit, eLife, 2025), with the goal of informing government policies and targeted interventions. His research aims to boost childhood cognitive outcomes while also drawing attention to early-life cognitive and neural socioeconomic disparities. For instance, he has shown how parental income affects cortical surface area (Judd et al., PNAS, 2020) and how schools perpetuate existing inequalities in intelligence (Judd et al., NPJ Sci Learning, 2022). More recently, he has also conducted fundamental research, such as separating variability from mean performance to isolate unique components of cognition (Judd et al., J. of Cognition, 2024). In addition to his empirical work, he is engaged in various open science initiatives, such as creating a popular plotting package (ggrain; downloads > 33k), building cognitive testing stimuli, and working on an open-source learning platform.

Judd’s long-term goal is to translate his research findings into actionable interventions that promote equitable opportunities for all children.

This information is accurate as of the academic year 2025-26.