Prakash Padakannaya Profile

Prakash Padakannaya is a professor of Psychology at Christ University, Bengaluru, India. He was trained in psycholinguistics and cognition during his Ph.D. at Utkal University, India, and the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, London, United Kingdom. His Ph.D., focusing on Reading Development in Oriya was the first study that showed that phonemic awareness is not so crucial for learning to read Indian alpha-syllabary. Since then, he has been engaged in research related to reading, dyslexia, language, and cognition among preliterate, young-literate, adult-literate, and illiterate populations, employing multiple approaches that comprise behavioral (including eye-tracking), neural (brain imaging), and genetic techniques.

Prof. Padakannaya is a recipient of many prestigious fellowships, including Mombusho, the Japanese Government Fellowship (Tsukuba Daigaku), a Fulbright Post-Doctoral Fellowship (Texas A&M University, USA), a Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowship (Haskins Laboratories, Yale University, USA), and Erasmus Mundus Visiting Professor Fellowship (University of Potsdam, Germany). He has traveled widely to in Asia, Europe, and North America on various academic assignments. He is an elected Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, USA, and the National Academy of Psychology, India. He is one of the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science (Springer Nature group of publishers). He is currently serving as the Managing Editor for the same journal.  He is also an Associate Editor of Psychological Studies (Springer), and Frontiers Psychology. He is on the Editorial Boards of some Indian journals and is a regular reviewer for many journals. He has more than 130 publications to his credit.

Prakash Padakannaya is serving as a member of the Executive Council of IUPsyS since 2018. He is currently the Treasurer of the Asia Pacific Psychology Alliance (APPA). Earlier, he served as the President of the National Academy of Psychology, India, and also as the Convener and Secretary-General of the National Academy of Psychology, India, for six years. He has served as a member of the Task Force for technical evaluation of grant proposals for Central Government Agencies such as the Department of Science and Technology (Cognitive Science Initiation), University Grants Commission, Council of Scientific & Industrial Research, National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), and similar agencies of national importance.