Dr. Philip Rubin is the Assistant Director for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences in the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in the Executive Office of the President of the United States and is leading their efforts in the area of neuroscience. He is also a Senior Advisor in the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences directorate (SBE) at the National Science Foundation (NSF). He is the former Chief Executive Officer at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, Connecticut, where he remains as a senior scientist. Haskins is a private, non-profit research institute affiliated with Yale University and the University of Connecticut that has a primary focus on the science of the spoken and written word, including speech, language, and reading. Dr. Rubin is also on leave as a Professor Adjunct in the Department of Surgery, Otolaryngology at the Yale University School of Medicine and a Research Affiliate in the Department of Psychology at Yale University and remains a Fellow at Yale’s Trumbull College.
Dr. Rubin’s research spans a number of disciplines, combining computational, engineering, linguistic, physiological, and psychological approaches to study embodied cognition, most particularly the biological bases of speech and language. He is best known for his work on articulatory synthesis (computational modeling of the physiology and acoustics of speech production), sinewave synthesis, signal processing, perceptual organization, and theoretical approaches and modeling of complex temporal events, and continues research collaborations with colleagues at Haskins, Yale, and other institutions. He received his B.A. from Brandeis University in psychology and linguistics and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut in experimental psychology. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Acoustical Society of America, the American Psychological Association (APA), the Association for Psychological Science, an elected member of the Psychonomic Society and Sigma Xi, and a member of a number of other professional societies. In 2010 Rubin received APA’s Meritorious Research Service Commendation.
From 2006-2011 Dr. Rubin was the Chair of the National Academies Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences, which focuses on the intersection of cognitive science and public policy. From 2009-2011 he was a member-at-large of the Executive Committee of the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences. He was also the Chair of the National Research Council (NRC) Committee on Field Evaluation of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences-Based Methods and Tools for Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence, and a member of the NRC Committee on Developing Metrics for Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Research.
From 2000 through 2003 Dr. Rubin served as the Director of the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences at the National Science Foundation (NSF), where he was responsible for administering a wide variety of fields including archaeology, cultural and physical anthropology, geography and regional science, environmental social and behavioral sciences, child development, linguistics, and psychology. While there he helped launch the Children’s Research Initiative, the Human Origins emphasis (HOMINID), and the Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental and Learning Sciences, and Perception, Action and Cognition programs. Other NSF activities included membership on the Science and Technology Centers (STC) coordinating committee and the chairmanship of the Human and Social Dynamics priority area. Dr. Rubin served as the NSF ex officio representative to the National Human Research Protection Advisory Committee and the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP), established to provide advice to the Secretary of Health and Human Services on issues related to the protection of human research subjects. He was also the co-chair of the interagency NSTC Committee on Science Human Subjects Research Subcommittee under the auspices of the Executive Office of the President, Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). He was also a member of the NSTC Interagency Working Group on Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Task Force on Anti-Terrorism Research and Development.
Dr. Rubin is a member of the Yale Mind, Brain, Culture, and Consciousness working group at the Whitney Humanities Center and a participant in the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics and its Technology and Ethics and Research Ethics working groups, and is the former co-leader of the Yale-Haskins Teagle Foundation Collegium on Student Learning. He was also the Chairman of the Board of the Discovery Museum and Planetarium in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Dr. Rubin is married to Joette Katz, retired Justice of the Supreme Court of Connecticut and currently Connecticut’s Commissioner of the Department of Children and Families, and has two children, Dr. Jason Rubin and Samantha Katz.
Download Bio (PDF)
Download CV (PDF)
