Virginia Wise Berninger, PhD

Virginia Wise Berninger, PhD, is Professor Emerita at the University of Washington, where she was a faculty member for 30 years. She taught in public schools for nearly a decade (both general education as well as special education and as a reading specialist) before receiving her doctorate in psychology from Johns Hopkins University. She completed interdisciplinary training as a research psychologist (cognates cognitive psychology, developmental psycholinguistics, social psychology, quantitative psychology, and psychobiology) and clinical psychologist.

Dr. Berninger was on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and Tufts School of Medicine before joining the University of Washington. She served as principal investigator for NIH grants on typical literacy development, components of writing disabilities, and intervention for low achieving readers and writers, and for an NIH-funded multidisciplinary learning disabilities research center. She co-authored or authored 212 published peer-reviewed research articles on many topics, including family genetics and brain imaging studies, diagnosis, and instructional treatment of specific learning disabilities. She also authored, co-authored, or edited 19 books, 77 book chapters, and other kinds of publications.