Nadine Gaab is an associate professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her work focuses on typical and atypical learning trajectories from infancy to adolescence with a special emphasis on language, reading and literacy development and the role of the environment in shaping these trajectories. Her work is at the intersection of developmental psychology, learning sciences, neuroscience, EdTech, and educational policy within a learning disability framework. Her research laboratory employs longitudinal behavioral and neuroimaging studies to characterize differences in learning as a complex outcome of cumulative risk and protective factors interacting within and across genetic, neurobiological, cognitive, and environmental levels from infancy to adolescence. Her theoretical work focuses on multifactorial frameworks of learning differences with an emphasis on early identification, and ‘preventative education’. One important key aspect of her work is the translation of research findings to address contemporary challenges in educational practice and policy.
She is the 2023 recipient of the Academic Research Recognition Award from the World Literacy Foundation and the 2019 recipient of the Learning Disabilities Association America Award for her work on learning disabilities. Furthermore, she has received the Norman Geschwind Memorial lecture in 2020 and the Alice Garside Award in 2017 from the International Dyslexia Association for outstanding leadership in advancing the science and advocacy of dyslexia. She also received the Allan Crocker Award in 2018 from Boston Children’s Hospital for advocacy on behalf of children with reading disabilities and efforts around the passage of the Massachusetts dyslexia screening legislation. She is currently an associate editor for the Journal of Learning Disabilities, Scientific Studies of Reading, and Developmental Science. Furthermore, she is the co-founder of EarlyBird Education, a gamified platform system for identifying children at-risk for language-based learning disabilities.