Professor Mangun is an internationally recognised leader in cognitive neuroscience, with a career spanning research, education, and academic leadership.
Prior to joining University of Birmingham, he was Distinguished Professor of Psychology (College of Letters and Science) and Neurology (School of Medicine) and founding Director of the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis. He also served for seven years as Dean of Social Sciences, where he oversaw a large and diverse academic division and advanced interdisciplinary research, undergraduate education, and initiatives supporting student success and inclusion.
Earlier in his career, Professor Mangun held faculty appointments in Neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine; in Psychiatry at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and in the Program in Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth College; and at Duke University and Duke University School of Medicine, where he was Professor of Psychology and Neurobiology and founding Director of the Duke Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. His research training and career have been supported by competitive fellowships and awards from the US National Institute of Mental Health, including a National Research Service Award, Scientist Development Award, and Senior Scientist Award.
Professor Mangun’s research focuses on the neural mechanisms of attention, awareness, and cognition in both health and disease. His work has made foundational contributions to understanding how the human brain selects relevant information and filters distraction, and how these processes are disrupted in neurological and psychiatric conditions. His research integrates multimodal neuroimaging approaches, including EEG, MEG, and fMRI, with advanced computational methods, and has been supported by major US funding agencies and international foundations, including the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and the Human Frontier Science Program.
He has played a central role in shaping the field of cognitive neuroscience. In 1994, he chaired the founding committee of the international Cognitive Neuroscience Society, and serves on the Governing Board, and as President and Treasurer of its corporate entity.
He has also contributed extensively to scientific advisory and peer-review activities internationally, including service for the US National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and the US National Academies of Science and Engineering, the European Research Council, and other major European research organisations.
Professor Mangun has also held extensive editorial leadership roles in cognitive neuroscience. He is the founding Field Chief Editor of Frontiers in Cognition and previously served as Editor of Cognitive Brain Research, Senior Editor of Brain Research, and, for more than two decades, Associate Editor of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. He has also edited special issues and scholarly volumes spanning attention, consciousness, cognitive electrophysiology, multimodal imaging, and the neural mechanisms of cognitive control.
Professor Mangun is the author of highly cited scientific publications and books, including his foundational textbook, Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind, which has sold more than 250,000 copies worldwide across six editions and has been translated into several languages. He has trained numerous graduate students and postdoctoral researchers and directed the Kavli Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience for a decade, a prestigious international training programme supported by the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), and the Kavli Foundation.
His contributions have been recognised with numerous honours, including awards from the Society for Psychophysiological Research, the American Psychological Association, and the Society for Neuroscience. He is an elected Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His recent honours include appointments as a Fulbright US–UK Distinguished Scholar and Royal Society Wolfson Fellow.