Professor
The following is the Department’s tribute to Professor Cronin-Golomb upon her retirement.
The Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences honors Professor Cronin-Golomb for her exceptional contributions to Boston University. Over a distinguished 37-year career, she has been a central figure in the Department, earning national and international acclaim for her research on aging, Parkinson’s disease, and related dementias.
Professor Cronin-Golomb joined Boston University in 1989 as an Assistant Professor and was awarded tenure in 1996. Throughout her career, she has been actively involved in multiple programs across the University, including Clinical Psychology, Brain, Behavior and Cognition, and the Program in Neuroscience. She has taught a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses, spanning neuropsychology, sleep and psychological functioning, physiological psychology, and the psychology of aging.
Professor Cronin-Golomb has also made substantial service contributions to the University. She has served on numerous committees, including the Appointment, Tenure, and Promotion committee for CAS , the Department’s Kavita Jain Dissertation Award Committee, and provided long-standing leadership as Director of Graduate Studies in the Department from 2012 to 2025.
Her impact as a mentor is equally distinguished. Professor Cronin-Golomb is an inspiring and deeply devoted mentor whose commitment to her trainees is unparalleled. She cultivates their intellectual and professional growth while serving as a steadfast advocate well beyond their time under her guidance, supporting their continued success as leaders in the field. Her mentorship has left a lasting imprint on generations of clinician-scientists, and she is particularly recognized for her ability to empower early-career investigators to become independent, confident, and impactful scientists.
Through her scholarship, mentorship, and service, Professor Cronin-Golomb has also transformed our understanding of the aging mind, particularly by establishing the central role of vision and perception in cognitive functioning. At a time when cognitive aging was largely viewed through the lens of memory decline, she demonstrated that how individuals see and interpret the world is fundamentally tied to how they think, remember, and function. Across Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and normal aging, her work has revealed the complex interplay among perceptual, visuospatial, and cognitive systems, while emphasizing the heterogeneity of aging and challenging one-size-fits-all models. Equally impactful is the translational reach of her work, as she has shown that simple, thoughtful environmental modifications, such as enhancing visual contrast, can meaningfully improve cognition, independence, and quality of life, reflecting a deep commitment to bridging science with real-world impact.
She has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications and 11 book chapters, with over 10,000 citations and an H-index of 56. Her work has appeared in leading journals such as Brain, Annals of Neurology, and Movement Disorders, and her research program has been continuously supported by NIH and foundation funding. She has contributed extensively through service on NIH study sections, editorial boards, including Psychological Science and Behavioral Neuroscience, and professional societies, serving as President of the International Society for Behavioral Neuroscience from 2002 to 2006. In addition, she has mentored dozens of predoctoral NIH NRSA fellows.
Her extraordinary contributions have been widely recognized through numerous honors, including her election as a 2026 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the 2022 Society for Neuroscience Bernice Grafstein Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Mentoring, the 2020 Outstanding Mentor Award from Boston University’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, the 2016 American Psychological Association Division 20 Mentorship Award in Aging, and her selection as Boston University’s 2012 Scholar Teacher of the Year. Her work continues to advance the science of aging while improving the lives of individuals, caregivers, and clinicians worldwide.
The faculty of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences are deeply grateful for all that Professor Cronin-Golomb has contributed to Boston University and wish her a happy and well-deserved retirement.
The following is a personal reflection provided by Professor Cronin-Golomb.
I was not an obvious person to become a university faculty member, having grown up in a rather depressed industrial town in Connecticut and being a first-generation college student. As an undergraduate at Wesleyan University, I was a biology major on a pre-med track almost by default. I didn’t even know what graduate school was. Then I discovered a course on the brain and the scales fell from my eyes. This was exactly what I wanted to do. I went to the California Institute of Technology, because they offered the largest graduate stipend, and I earned my PhD and then returned to the Northeast to do a postdoc at MIT. My husband had just gotten a faculty position at Tufts and we were trying to solve the 2-body problem. At that time, in 1989, neuroscience was still new as a discipline with departmental affiliations, so there weren’t many suitable faculty jobs. A position in clinical neuropsychology opened at BU and he dared me to apply for it even though I wasn’t a clinical psychologist (my degree was in Psychobiology, from the Biology department). Dare accepted. BU saw something in me, apparently. It’s been a wonderful fit for me for the last 36+ years. I was happy teaching the undergraduate and graduate neuropsychology courses that I developed, and interacting with students for many years as Director of Graduate Studies.
Boston is a hub for neuropsychology, and BU was a great place to land, especially in my department. My research focus has been on perception, cognition, motor function, mood, sleep, and other aspects of daily function in aging and in the age-related neurodegenerative disorders of Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease, mainly doing basic research but with gratifying forays into the development of interventions to enhance quality of life. (See, this is how I fit into Clinical). I have loved working with our research participants, older adults who are healthy or are living with challenging conditions, and I have learned a lot from them.
BU has changed since 1989. The name of our department is now Psychological and Brain Sciences rather than Psychology. There were major transformations within the two programs with which I am affiliated. The Clinical Program moved from being heavily psychoanalytic to strongly in the camp of cognitive-behavioral therapy but with a growing neuropsychology presence. The Program in Brain, Behavior, and Cognition (originally Experimental Psychology) sharpened its focus on neuroscience. I am dazzled by what my junior colleagues are able to do now, using methods I only dreamed of when I started. The larger university has changed a great deal as well. It has an overall more welcoming vibe and I think more respect for students and faculty than when I first came. It looks different too. There have always been many challenges in academia; that does not change, though the particular challenges do (e.g., current fretting about AI). I will not be part of solving those problems but I look forward to seeing what you all come up with.
At this stage in my career, people ask about what advice I would give to those just starting out. Not that I feel particularly wise, but I would say to train broadly as well as deeply and if you want to do something, go for it. Don’t be put off by a job description for which you are not a perfect match—you may in fact be perfect for that position anyway (as I found out myself!). Also, there is no single right path. There are many. If one path is blocked, take another, which may present new and exciting opportunities that you had not considered before. I would also say, “Don’t say no to you”. Should I have applied for a faculty position in clinical psychology, with no background in that area? Of course not. But I did, and here we are almost 37 years later. I believe I did my job well, and I will leave feeling satisfied. The same applies to life outside of work. Did I have any business playing baseball for first time at age 64 at the Red Sox Women’s Fantasy Camp, having never played even softball before and not being remotely athletic? Of course not. But off I went to camp and had a blast. Having finished my fifth year as a camper, I now have an extensive friend group of dozens of “baseball sistahs”. And that too gives me satisfaction. You don’t have to do everything well, but you do have to do what you WANT to do. A little fearlessness is a good thing.
None of what I have done at BU would have been possible without my doctoral, MA, and undergraduate students and my colleagues at BU and beyond. They are great researchers and fantastic people. Even if our current lives no longer intersect, I find ways to hang onto them. My former doctoral students know that they will NEVER leave the lab, even after it closes down. It is such a joy to learn of their accomplishments and what is making them proud and happy.
BU has provided me with a great base for many years to support my research and teaching, and I am grateful for that. It has been a busy and fulfilling career. My plan now is to focus on the other pleasures of life, such as traveling more extensively with my family and developing some fun new hobbies– and continuing to play baseball at least once a year.
The following is Professor Cronin-Golomb’s original faculty profile.
Director: Vision & Cognition Laboratory
Dr. Cronin-Golomb received the Ph.D. in Psychobiology from the California Institute of Technology, following a B.A. in Biology-Psychology from Wesleyan University. She is a faculty member in both the Clinical Program and the Program in Brain, Behavior, and Cognition of PBS, as well as the Neurophotonics Center and the interdisciplinary Center for Systems Neuroscience. She is director of the Vision and Cognition Laboratory. Dr. Cronin-Golomb’s research spans perception, cognition, motor function, mood, sleep, and other aspects of daily function in aging and the age-related neurodegenerative disorders Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. Her methodologies include perceptual and cognitive neuroscience, neuropsychological assessment, neuroimaging, and visual psychophysics. Dr. Cronin-Golomb’s lab engages in basic research and in the development of interventions to enhance quality of life, especially in older adults. Her group collaborates with faculty from the Charles River Campus including the College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences: Sargent College and the College of Engineering, and with faculty from the Medical Campus and the VA Boston Healthcare System. She teaches courses at the undergraduate and graduate level in Neuropsychology.