Caitlin Tenison is a research scientist in in the Research & Development division at ETS. She earned her Ph.D. in psychology from Carnegie Mellon University in 2016. She has more than 10 years’ experience in the field of cognitive science studying the processes underpinning higher order cognition. Her doctoral research focused on modeling the learning mechanisms and cognitive changes that underlie the acquisition of cognitive skill, by using a mixture of cognitive modeling, statistical modeling, and machine learning approaches. Her research is characterized by the use of multimodal data (e.g., behavioral process data, surveys, neuroimaging) to provide convergent evidence of the state of an individual. More recently, her work has focused on expanding the scope to include diverse learner populations and using these results to develop technologies to support the learner.
Her research at ETS brings together her academic research on understanding human learning and decision-making with her prior industry experience building technologies to support training. Broadly her work focuses on modeling the state of the learner from the decisions they make and actions they take. From investigating student strategy use and proficiency in complex digital environments to capturing student preferences when applying to universities, Tenison uses foundational theory in cognitive science to inform the construction and evaluation of her models. She is an active member of the program committee for the International Conference on Educational Data Mining. She has extensive experience as a principal investigator conducting research for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and has received funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Air Force, the Army, the Navy, and the Defense Health Agency.