Emily Finn, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences, has been named to Scientific American’s inaugural Young American Scientists list, which recognizes early-career researchers whose work is shaping the future of science.
Finn is one of 28 researchers in the Class of 2026, chosen through a nomination and review process with input from researchers around the world. The honorees work across fields including astronomy, botany, artificial intelligence, and medicine, and all are under 40.
“The Class of 2026 is the result of months of global outreach and analysis,” David Ewalt, editor in chief at Scientific American, said in the announcement. “With this inaugural list, we wanted to highlight the extraordinary talent and promise across the U.S. and spotlight the researchers doing remarkable work today who are poised to make the world better tomorrow. Together, their work and achievements emphasize areas of scientific advancement and emerging opportunities.”
“I was very surprised and honored to learn that I’d been nominated, and ultimately selected, to be part of this amazing set of people,” says Finn. “While it’s gratifying on a personal level, in a larger sense, I’m grateful that outlets like Scientific American are working to highlight people choosing to make their careers in science at a time when it’s so critical to buffer public support for the work we do.”
Finn studies what makes each of us unique: how our individual traits shape the way we perceive and judge the world, and how those differences show up in patterns of brain activity. Her lab combines behavioral, neuroimaging, and computational methods to study why different people can arrive at different interpretations of the same experience, especially when taking in rich, naturalistic material like movies and stories. One strand of that work looks at how people resolve ambiguity in a narrative, and how that shifts with both lasting traits and momentary state of mind.
In 2015, Finn and her colleagues found that the pattern of connections in a person’s brain is distinctive enough to work like a fingerprint, able to identify individuals and even predict aspects of their intelligence. Her research has implications for understanding misinformation, political polarization, and depression.
“Emily Finn is one of the most exciting young scientists in cognitive neuroscience, and her presence enriches PBS and the campus through her groundbreaking research, outstanding teaching, and generous mentorship,” says Brad Duchaine, chair of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.
Finn earned her PhD and bachelor’s degree at Yale and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Mental Health before joining Dartmouth in 2020. The Scientific American honor adds to recognition that includes a Cognitive Neuroscience Society Young Investigator Award, the National Institute of Mental Health Director’s Award for Scientific Contributions, the Association for Psychological Science Rising Star Award, and, this year, the Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions.
She has also helped build free online tutorials for analyzing functional MRI data, including dartbrains.org and naturalistic-data.org, so learners anywhere can pick up the techniques.
Scientific American was founded in 1845 and is the oldest continuously published magazine in America.