Hoeft also created the “B.R.A.I.N. Camp” reading intervention program with Devin Kearns, a professor of educational psychology in the Neag School of Education; and the highly successful “Ask a Brain Scientist” online series of hands-on science classwork used by hundreds of children registered from around Connecticut and elsewhere in the U.S.

Hoeft also created the “B.R.A.I.N. Camp” reading intervention program with Devin Kearns, a professor of educational psychology in the Neag School of Education; and the highly successful “Ask a Brain Scientist” online series of hands-on science classwork used by hundreds of children registered from around Connecticut and elsewhere in the U.S.

This summer, UConn neuroscientist Fumiko Hoeft, Neag School Associate Professor of Educational  Psychology Devin Kearns, and collaborators from psychological sciences, education, mathematics, the Brain Imaging Research Center (BIRC), and others  launched the five-week, all-expenses-included summer camp at Storrs for third- and fourth-grade children who are struggling to read.

Devin Kearns, a reading disability researcher who’s been working with the education department on the new universal screening program, said the assessments can take as little as one minute to conduct to identify which skills young readers need extra support with.

Dr. Fumiko Hoeft, director of the Brain Imaging Research Center at the University of Connecticut and faculty member at the University of California San Francisco, and Roland Hancock, associate director of the Brain Imaging Center at the University of Connecticut, conceived the app in 2014. Hoeft, along with Devin Kearns at the University of Connecticut, John Gabriell at MIT, and the Dyslexia Center at the University of California San Francisco, are leading the project, which is currently in the final validation phase.

This spring, Marissa Gadacy ’17 (CLAS) and Neag School of Education assistant professor Devin Kearns will collaborate on research examining aspects of elementary school students’ reading comprehension skills, thanks to funding from UConn’s Office of Undergraduate Research, which selected their research proposal for one of its 2016 Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts Research Experience (SHARE) Awards.