Simon E. Fisher

Simon E. Fisher is a director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and Professor of Language and Genetics at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Following his Natural Sciences degree (Cambridge University), and a doctorate in genetics (Oxford University), Simon carried out postdoctoral research at Oxford’s Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics on genomics of developmental disorders of speech, language, and reading. From 2002-2010, Simon was a Royal Society University Research Fellow and head of his own group at the Wellcome Trust Centre, investigating how language-related genes influence brain development. In 2010 he was appointed by the Max Planck Society to establish a new department at the Nijmegen MPI, devoted to tracing functional links between genetics and language. Simon’s research adopts a multidisciplinary viewpoint, integrating data from genomics, psychology, neuroscience, developmental biology and evolutionary anthropology.

About Dorothy:

"I first got to know Dorothy in the mid-1990s, when we were beginning molecular genetic investigations of developmental language disorders, a challenging area that has seen its ups and downs over the years. Beyond the many insightful contributions Dorothy has made to this ever-evolving field, her influence strongly shaped my outlook on our roles and responsibilities as scientists, especially her passion for robust, reproducible and transparent science, and her commitment to clear no-nonsense communication of findings across fields and with the wider world. For better or worse, Dorothy is also the reason why, after much dithering, I eventually joined Twitter."