George “Ron” Mangun and Tamara Swaab are joining the University of Birmingham in the U.K. on the faculty of the School of Psychology and the Centre for Human Brain Health.
A former dean in the College of Letters and Science, Mangun will serve as professor of cognitive neuroscience and 125th Anniversary Chair and director of the Centre for Human Brain Health, or CHBH in fall 2026. Swaab begins her appointment as professor of brain, language & cognition in April.
“We are grateful for the many contributions Ron and Tamara have made to UC Davis in their long and distinguished careers, Ron as dean of the former Division of Social Sciences,” said Estella Atekwana, dean of the College of Letters and Science. “Their legacy of leadership, research and developing young and talented scientists has helped make UC Davis a global leader in the fields of psychology and neuroscience.”
Mangun is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neurology at UC Davis and has served on the faculty since 1992. His research on the neuroscience of attention investigates how we perceive, attend, ignore and become aware of events in our environment.
He is the author of several influential publications, including the foundational textbook Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind, now in its sixth edition. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Mangun served as dean of the Division of Social Sciences in the College of Letters and Science from 2008 to 2015. Under his leadership, social sciences departments rose in national rankings and doubled their extramural research support. Initiatives launched under Mangun’s leadership include the Center for Science and Innovation Studies, the Center for Poverty and Inequality Research and the Data Studies Initiative for the liberal arts.
Mangun founded the Center for Mind and Brain, or CMB, in 2002 and currently serves as its co-director. CMB has attracted some of world’s most talented researchers in the field to UC Davis. Since its founding, CMB has trained 195 Ph.D. students and post-doctoral researchers and 2,000 undergraduate interns. Its peer-reviewed journal publications number more than 1,500.
Swaab is a distinguished cognitive neuroscientist. In her Laboratory for the Cognitive Neuroscience of Language in the CMB, she studies the cognitive and neural underpinnings of language processing in monolingual and bilingual readers and listeners across the lifespan. She has also led training initiatives and mentored students and early-career researchers in the cognitive neuroscience of language, spanning experimental design, data analysis and neurophysiological techniques.
Swaab first joined UC Davis in 1994 as a post-graduate researcher at the Center for Neuroscience. Since that time, she has served at UC Davis as a postdoctoral fellow and as a faculty member in the Department of Psychology and CMB for 25 years, becoming a full professor in 2013.
Reflecting a long-standing commitment to supporting faculty and families, Swaab has also served as a Faculty Work–Life Advisor in UC Davis Academic Affairs since 2003, as part of the Academic Work Life Program. A former Editor-in-Chief of the journal Cognition, she is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.
“We are very excited to welcome Ron and Tamara to the CHBH,” said Andrew Bagshaw, a professor in the University of Birmingham Centre for Human Brain Health. “They bring a huge amount of experience and an international profile that will significantly enhance CHBH’s visibility, influence, and impact on the global stage.”
Both Mangun and Swaab will continue their affiliation with UC Davis as emeritus professors.
“We don’t see this next adventure as leaving UC Davis, a place we love, but rather as adding Birmingham to our family,” said Mangun.
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