Kimberly Noble

Kimberly Noble, MD, PhD, serves as the Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Child and Parent Development and Education and Professor of Neuroscience and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she directs the Developmental Psychology Program and the Neurocognition, Early Experience and Development (NEED) Lab. She is a board-certified pediatrician who earned her undergraduate, graduate, and medical degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and completed her residency in pediatrics at Columbia University Medical Center/NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. Previously, Noble held positions as Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Sergievsky Center at Columbia University and Attending Pediatrician at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Her research investigates socioeconomic disparities in children's cognitive, emotional, and brain development across infancy, childhood, and adolescence, emphasizing modifiable environmental factors and interventions.

As principal investigator of Baby’s First Years, the first U.S. randomized controlled trial of poverty reduction through unconditional cash transfers to families with infants, Noble's work has produced influential findings on infant brain function and shaped public policy, including her 2022 testimony contributing to the expansion of New York's Empire State Child Credit for children aged 0-3. Key publications include the 2015 Nature Neuroscience article 'Family Income, Parental Education and Brain Development in Children and Adolescents,' which linked socioeconomic status to brain structure variations; 'Neural Correlates of Socioeconomic Status in the Developing Human Brain' (2012, Developmental Science); and 'Socioeconomic Disparities in Neurocognitive Development in the First Two Years of Life' (2015, Developmental Psychobiology). Noble has received the 2021 American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest (Senior Career), the 2017 Association for Psychological Science Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions, and is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. She has delivered a TED Talk viewed over 2.5 million times, provided keynote lectures, and consulted for organizations such as Sesame Workshop and the National Academies of Sciences. Noble mentors over 20 students, has graduated seven doctoral students, and supports faculty recruitment and curriculum development at Teachers College.

Professional Email: kgn2106@tc.columbia.edu