Tania Lombrozo is the Arthur W. Marks ‘19 Professor of Psychology at Princeton University, where she directs the Program in Cognitive Science, co-directs a research initiative on Natural and Artificial Minds within the Princeton AI Lab, and has affiliations with the Department of Philosophy and University Center for Human Values.

Lombrozo’s research, which integrates cognitive science and philosophy, explores the roles of explanation, curiosity, understanding, and belief in the modern world—a world that presents us with new and perennial challenges as leaders, educators, parents, and humans. Her first book is Why We Ask Why: The Science of Explanation and the Human Drive to Understand (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2026).

Lombrozo received a PhD in Psychology from Harvard University in 2006, following bachelor’s degrees in philosophy and symbolic systems from Stanford University. She was a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley, before joining the faculty at Princeton in 2018. Lombrozo is the author of over 100 scientific publications and has been recognized with awards from the Association for Psychological Science, the American Psychological Association, the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and the National Science Foundation, among others. She lives in Princeton, NJ with her husband and two daughters.