Cynthia F. Moss

Cynthia F. Moss is an American neuroscientist and Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, with joint appointments in the Departments of Neuroscience and Mechanical Engineering. Moss is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Acoustical Society of America, and the International Society for Neuroethology. Her research focuses on the mechanisms of sensory-motor integration, scene perception, spatial attention, and spatial memory.

Early life and education Born in Columbus, Ohio, Moss is the daughter of Howard A. Moss and Adrienne H. Moss. She grew up in Rockville, Maryland, and had the opportunity to live for one year in Florence, Italy and one year in Linköping, Sweden during her teenage years. Her brother Randolph Moss is a judge in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Her brother Eric Moss is Senior Vice President, Deputy General Counsel & Chief Compliance Officer of the Bank of Montreal.

Moss graduated with a B.S. (Summa cum laude) from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and earned a Ph.D. from Brown University. After earning her graduate degree, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Tübingen, Germany, and later a Research Fellow at Brown University.

Research and career In 1989 Moss joined the faculty of Harvard University as an assistant professor. She became the Morris Kahn Associate Professor in 1994.

Moss accepted a professorship in 1995 at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP), in the Department of Psychology and the Institute for Systems Research. During her tenure at UMCP, she was Director of the interdepartmental graduate program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science.

In 2014, Moss joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins University as Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences. She holds appointments in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Whiting School of Engineering, and the School of Medicine.

Moss's research seeks to understand the brain's representation of dynamic sensory information in the natural environment. Her research program uses the active sensing system of echolocating bats, gaining access to the sensory information these animals use to guide their behaviors.

Echolocating bats produce high frequency sounds and extract information carried by echo returns to guide natural behaviors. Moss's lab group pioneered the use of synchronized high-speed video and microphone array recordings to quantify the bat's coordinated echolocation and flight behavior during target tracking and discrimination, obstacle avoidance, social interactions, and navigation.

Moss's research uses modern neuroscience tools to discover mechanisms of auditory scene analysis, spatial memory and navigation, representing stimulus space and orienting behaviors, sensorimotor transformations, object distance perception and tactile sensing.

Selected publications

Articles

Books Moss, C. F., & Shettleworth, S. J. (Eds.). (1996). Neuroethological studies of cognitive and perceptual processes. Westview Press. Thomas, J. A., Moss, C. F., & Vater, M. (Eds.). (2002). Echolocation in Bats and Dolphins. University of Chicago Press.

Awards and honors 1992 – Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award 2001 – Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America 2012 – Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 2018 – James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award 2018 – Fellow of the International Society for Neuroethology 2024-2026 -- President, International Society for Neuroethology