Michael Frank

Michael Frank is the Benjamin Scott Crocker Professor of Human Biology in Stanford University's Department of Psychology, with courtesy appointments as Professor of Linguistics. He also serves as Director of the Symbolic Systems Program and the Center for the Study of Language and Information since 2020. Frank received his Ph.D. in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2010 and his B.S. with honors in Symbolic Systems and B.A. in Comparative Literature from Stanford University in 2004. His academic career at Stanford began as an Assistant Professor of Psychology in 2010, progressing to Associate Professor in 2014 and Professor in 2021; he held the David and Lucile Packard Foundation Professorship in Human Biology from 2018 to 2023.

Frank investigates children's language learning and its interaction with social development, utilizing behavioral experiments, computational models, and advanced techniques including large-scale online studies, eye-tracking, and head-mounted cameras. He founded the ManyBabies Consortium to promote reproducibility in developmental research and has created key data resources such as Wordbank, Peekbank, and SAYCam. Notable publications include the books Variability and Consistency in Early Language Learning: The Wordbank Project (2021, MIT Press) and Experimentology: An Open Science Approach to Experimental Psychology Methods (2024, MIT Press), as well as highly cited papers like "Pragmatic Language Interpretation as Probabilistic Inference" (Goodman & Frank, 2016, Trends in Cognitive Sciences) and "Wordbank: an open repository for developmental vocabulary data" (Frank et al., 2017, Journal of Child Language). Among his honors are Fellowship in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2024), the NAS Troland Research Award (2020), and the FABBS Early Career Impact Award (2017). Frank has held leadership roles including Chair of the Cognitive Science Society Governing Board (2018-2019), Associate Editor for Cognition (2016-2017), and service on multiple editorial boards.

Professional Email: mcfrank@stanford.edu