MARK CHANGIZI is a scientist with expertise in theoretical neurobiology, vision, cognitive science, and language. He is also a regular contributor to Forbes.com and Wired.com. In 2002, he won a prestigious Sloan-Swartz Fellowship at Caltech, and since 2007 he has been an assistant professor in the Department of Cognitive Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

His research aims to grasp the ultimate foundations underlying why we think, feel and see as we do. Focusing on “why” questions, he has made important discoveries on why we see in color, why we see illusions, why we have forward-facing eyes, why letters are shaped as they are, why the brain is organized as it is, why animals have as many limbs and fingers as they do, and why the dictionary is organized as it is. He has more than thirty scientific journal articles, some of which have been covered in news venues such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, USA Today, Time Magazine, Reuters, ABC News, Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, Scientific American, Wired, Discover Magazine and Live Science. He has written three books, HARNESSED: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man (Benbella 2011), THE VISION REVOLUTION (Benbella, 2009) and THE BRAIN FROM 25,000 FEET (Kluwer, 2003). Photo: Mark McCarty, Rensselaer.