Guinevere Eden Honored by International Dyslexia Association

Posted in GUMC Stories

November 28, 2016 – The International Dyslexia Association (IDA) awarded GUMC’s Guinevere Eden, D. Phil., with its Norman Geschwind Award – an honor recognizing her outstanding research in the neural basis of dyslexia and how the brain changes following intervention.

The honor was bestowed during the IDA’s Annual International Conference in Orlando last month where Eden also delivered the Norman Geschwind Memorial Lecture titled “Brain Imaging Studies of Reading.”

The IDA’s Annual International Conference attracts experts from around the world to share the latest research and remediation in reading, literacy and learning. Eden is a past president of the IDA.

The award and lectureship Eden received is named in memory of Norman Geschwind, who served on the board of directors of the Orton Society (now the International Dyslexia Association) when he died suddenly in 1984. His research interests focused on the relationship between brain anatomy and behavior. The recipient of this award is chosen for their broad interests in dyslexia and related disabilities and abilities, to reflect the nature of Geschwind’s work.

Eden is director of GUMC’s Center for the Study of Learning. Eden and her colleagues were the first to apply functional MRI to the study of dyslexia in 1996. Today, she continues to investigate the neural basis of dyslexia and brain-based changes following intervention. A recent $2.8 million grant from NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development has allowed Eden to expand her research to include children with both math and reading difficulties.

** Watch as Dr. Eden describes her research with children who have math and reading disabilities.

In May, Eden testified before a full committee hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions where she called for more dialogue between neuroscientists in the lab and educators in the classroom.

Eden has published widely and serves on the editorial boards for the journals Annals of Dyslexia, Dyslexia, Brain and Language, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience and Human Brain Mapping.

Earlier this month, Eden was honored by her Georgetown peers with the Leadership in Research Award at the Ninth Annual GUMC Convocation.

Karen Teber
GUMC Communications