Nilsu Atilgan, PhD

Caterina Azzarello

Catherine Bordeau

Catherine is a content developer and instructional designer focused on readability and language learning in education.

Zoya Bylinskii, PhD

Zoya is a Research Scientist in the Creative Intelligence Lab at Adobe Research (in Cambridge, MA) and an Associate of the Institute of Applied Computational Science at Harvard University. Zoya received her Computer Science Ph.D. and M.Sc. from MIT in 2018 and 2015, respectively. Zoya works at the interface of human perception & cognition, computer vision, and human-computer interaction. She is leading the readability research effort from within Adobe Research and is actively hiring interns in this space.

Dave Crossland

Dave is lead operations manager for Google Fonts, and has commissioned thousands of fonts from hundreds of designers for dozens of writing systems, plus font editors, educational resources and live events. The way type design combines visual culture, language, technology, business, history – and its ubiquity – make this field something he finds endlessly fascinating.

Kathy Crowley

Kathy brought her high-tech and non-profit experience to found Readability Matters, a Tech-for-Good non-profit focused on shifting reading outcomes for adults and children. Previously, Kathy held global technology leadership roles at Hewlett Packard Company and served on the boards of several international non-profits, including a $2.2M Gates-funded cross-organizational program dedicated to advancing women’s economic empowerment.

Jonathan Dobres, PhD

Jon’s background in advanced data analytics and scientific communication and extensive experience investigating a wide array of user experience issues includes past work investigating the impact of typographic design. Passionate about data science and statistical analysis, Dr. Dobres often combines large, disparate data sources into a cohesive story or developing custom software tools for analytical purposes. His publication record includes high quality research in the fields of visual perception, interface design, and related areas.

Amy E. Giroux

Amy is a laboratory associate at the University of Central Florida focusing on readability in education and extended reality.

Mert Küçük

Mert is one of the developers of the VRL in Pavlovia platform. He is a PhD Candidate at Izmir University of Economics studying brain oscillations, aging, and visual perception.

Md Mamunur Rashid

Rashid is a PhD Student at the University of Central Florida applying AI and ML to readability and neuro-ergonomics for health care systems.

Veronica Penkova, MSc

Veronica Penkova is a graduate student at the University of Glasgow who assists with readability test implementation in Pavlovia, Prolific, and Qualtrics. She is interested in readability in children and implementing accessibility user research.

Ben D. Sawyer, PhD

Ben (he/his) is Director of The Readability Consortium and The Virtual Readability Laboratory, where he leads teams rethinking how information flows from human to machine, and back. He is Faculty at UCF in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems within the College of Computer Engineering and Computer Science, and The Institute for Simulation and Training. His previous positions include MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics, and Air Force Research Laboratory 711th Human Performance Wing. More at bendsawyer.com.

Shelley Rodrigo, PhD

Rochelle (Shelley) Rodrigo is the Senior Director of the Writing Program; Associate Professor in the Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of English (RCTE); and Associate Writing Specialist (Continuing Status) in the Department of English at the University of Arizona. She researches how “newer” technologies better facilitate communicative interactions, specifically teaching and learning. As well as co-authoring three editions of The Wadsworth/Cengage Guide to Research, Shelley also co-edited Rhetorically Rethinking Usability (Hampton Press). Her scholarly work has appeared in Computers and Composition, C&C Online, Technical Communication Quarterly, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, EDUCAUSE Quarterly, Journal of Interactive Technology & Pedagogy, Enculturation¸ as well as various edited collections. In 2021 she was elected Vice President (4-year term including President) of the National Council of Teachers of English and won the Arizona Technology in Education Association’s Ruth Catalano Friend of Technology Innovation Award, in 2018 she became an Adobe Education Leader, in 2014 she was awarded Old Dominion University’s annual Teaching with Technology Award, in 2012 the Digital Humanities High Powered Computing Fellowship, and, in 2010 she became a Google Certified Teacher/Innovator. 

Ben Wolfe, PhD

Dr. Benjamin Wolfe is an Assistant Professor in Psychology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, where he is a Director of the Applied Perception and Psychophysics Laboratory (APPLY). Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Toronto, he was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2015-2020, received his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2015, and his B.A. in Psychology from Boston University in 2008. 

Dr. Wolfe’s interests in readability are grounded in his work on information acquisition and eye movements, asking how we gather the visual information we need for myriad tasks under conditions of time pressure. This work exists in a use-inspired framework, drawing on applied, practical tasks as a way to understand the underlying visual mechanisms. He is particularly interested in using tools from vision science to help improve reading for all readers. 

Joanna Lewis, PhD

Dr. Joanna Lewis is an assistant professor at the University of Northern Colorado. She received her Psychology Ph.D. in 2018 from the University of Central Florida as an NSF GRFP fellow. Her work focuses on the blending of interdisciplinary topics regarding visual attention, anxiety, distraction from technology, usability, cybersecurity, and education.

Dr. Lewis has focused on translating the benefits of individualized typography to new contexts, specifically to mathematical operations. Additional work explores the potential positive outcomes of applying typography recommendations within the classroom to improve digital literacy, particularly for first generation students.

Dave Miller, PhD

Dave Miller earned his doctorate in communication research from Stanford University, where he studied human-computer moral conflict and the human factors challenges of interaction with partially-automated systems. Subsequently he taught at Cornell University and led research focused on enhancing reading performance at the University of Central Florida. Prior to this, he studied persuasive interface design at New York University, earning a master’s degree from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, and worked with the Persuasive Technology Lab and the Center for Design Research at Stanford University. He holds a bachelor’s degree in human-environment relations with a minor in psychology from Cornell University, and has worked in human factors consulting on projects as diverse as revising the design of Disney character suits and character actor choreography to reduce injury risk, optimizing baggage handling operations, collaborating on the design of barcode scanners, and enhancing hospital infection control procedures.

Sofie Beier, PhD

Sofie Beier is a graphic designer and professor at the Royal Danish Academy, where she is the head of Centre for Visibility Design. She is the author of the ‘Type Tricks’ book series and of ‘Reading Letters: designing for legibility’. She has further published numerous academic papers on typeface legibility. Her research is focused on improving the reading experience by achieving a better understanding of 1) how different typefaces and letter shapes can influence the way we read and 2) how eye-tracking can be used to inform the adjustment of the typographic layout to meet the needs of the individual reader.

Jenae Cohn, PhD

Jenae Cohn writes and speaks about how to support engagement, communication, and critical thinking in digital learning experiences. She currently works as the Executive Director for the Center for Teaching and Learning at UC Berkeley and has held prior roles at California State University, Sacramento, Stanford University and University of California, Davis. She is the author of the book, Skim, Dive, Surface: Teaching Digital Reading (West Virginia University Press, 2021) and the forthcoming book Design for Learning (Rosenfeld Press, 2023). She regularly contributes to The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, and Faculty Focus. Supporting instructors in mindful approaches to digital pedagogy, she leads workshops and events for colleges nationwide. As a researcher, she explores digital literacy, student experiences with online learning, and reading and writing across the curriculum. Her first book, Skim, Dive, Surface: Teaching Digital Reading explores ways that higher education instructors can support students in more engaged, focused, and intentional online reading experiences. Her forthcoming book Design for Learning focuses on how user experience principles can inform online learning design, importantly including the structuring and design of text for online courses. 

Sunaina Shenoy, PhD

Dr. Sunaina Shenoy is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of New Mexico. She earned a Ph.D. in Special Education from the University of California, Berkeley and completed her post-doctoral work at the Florida Center for Reading Research at Florida State University. She teaches in the Educational Diagnosis Certificate Program at UNM, specializing in courses related to the assessment and identification of students with disabilities. Her research interests are in assessment; early identification of dyslexia in bilingual and multilingual populations; reading acquisition; bilingual special education; and international special education.

She started working as a Research Associate with the Virtual Reading Lab within the Readability Consortium in Fall 2022. She works with the research team from University of Central Florida, led by Stephanie Day, on a study titled, “Child Readability in India.” Her main role is to be a liaison between the research team and schools in India to ensure that is study is run with fidelity. She has been working closely with them on all aspects of the study, including assessing the cultural relevance of passages and generating new passages as needed to align with the Indian context.

Shannon Sheppard, PhD

Dr. Shannon Sheppard is an incoming Assistant Professor of Speech and Hearing Sciences at the University of Washington starting in Fall 2023 (currently an Assistant Professor of Communication Sciences & Disorders at Chapman University). She is the Director of the Cognition Rehabilitation And Neuroscience In Atypical Language Lab (CRANIAL LAB). Dr. Sheppard is a cognitive scientist and conducts interdisciplinary research encompassing several fields including neuroscience and linguistics. Her research aims to investigate how the brain understands spoken and written language. Another goal is to determine how we can improve language and reading comprehension in multiple populations, ranging from the average reader to individuals with language and reading disorders.

Lab Website: www.cranial-lab.org

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/cranial.lab/

Denis Pelli, PhD

Dr. Denis Pelli studied applied math at Harvard (BA in Applied Math, magna cum laude) and vision at Cambridge (Physiology PhD), with Campbell and Robson. At Minneapolis (one-year postdoc with Legge), Syracuse (professor), and NASA Ames (sabbatical with Watson and Ahumada), he worked on visual requirements of reading and mobility, on visual testing (e.g. the Pelli-Robson Contrast Sensitivity Chart), and on characterizing the limits of visual perception. Since 1995 he has been Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University, studying letter and object recognition.