Melina Uncapher

Dr. Melina Uncapher is the Lead Program Director for AERDF and Director of AERDF's founding program, EF+Math. She is an educational neuroscience professor and retains her lab at University of California, San Francisco. Uncapher’s career focus is on championing inclusive R&D in education, and advocating asset-based approaches to student learning. She brings together educators, researchers, and developers to co-create transformative solutions to problems of practice using rigorous science-of-learning insights and the wisdom of educators. She led a multi-university network funded by the National Science Foundation to study how executive function skills develop in real-world classrooms and co-founded a science-for-good nonprofit that equips educators and students with practical tools based on learning science. She was also funded by the National Institutes for Health to study how technology use is associated with developmental changes in student cognition. She earned her PhD in Neurobiology from the University of California, Irvine and completed postdoctoral and research scientist fellowships at Stanford University.