2022-Gala Program Online Honoree -4.14.2022

HONOREE
ELISSA L. NEWPORT ’69, PhD
National Academy of Sciences
Elissa Newport ’69 is a professor of neurology and
the director of the Center for Brain Plasticity and
Recovery at Georgetown University. She began her
career at the University of California, San Diego, and
the University of Illinois before joining the faculty
of the University of Rochester, where she was the
George Eastman Professor of Brain and Cognitive
Sciences. She earned a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1975.
Professor Newport first became interested in psychology at Barnard
and has made major contributions to the study of language acquisition
and linguistic rules, with a particular focus on American Sign Language
(ASL). Among her significant contributions to her field are the “less is
more” theory of language acquisition, which posits that children are
better than adults at learning languages, and the discovery that ASL is a
linguistically natural language with its own unique rules, rather than a mere
representation of spoken language.
In addition to being a fellow of numerous scientific groups, Professor
Newport is a recipient of the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and
Cognitive Science, and her research has been supported by the National
Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Packard
Foundation. In December 2020, she received the American Psychological
Association’s Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions, which
is considered to be one of the highest distinctions for research in
psychology.