She trained at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and earned her PhD in 1996 from Radboud University, Nijmegen. She has held influential academic roles, including founding faculty positions at both the Duke University Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain. Professor Swaab has also served in leadership roles in the Society for the Neurobiology of Language and the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, and is the immediate past Editor-in-Chief of Cognition. She has advised and consulted for the NIH, the NSF, the Max Planck Society, and the European Research Council (ERC). Professor Swaab is an elected Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.
From July 2026, the University will also welcome Professor George R. “Ron” Mangun as a 125th Anniversary Chair and Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, and Director of the Centre for Human Brain Health (CHBH).
Professor Mangun is an internationally renowned cognitive neuroscientist, currently a Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neurology and founding Director of the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis. His pioneering research investigates how the brain enables perception, attention, and awareness - work supported over decades by the NIH, NSF, the Human Frontier Science Program, and other major funders. His lab has been central to defining fundamental neural processes that allow humans to focus attention and filter distraction, as well as understanding how these processes break down in clinical disorders.
