President, University of Delaware 

Laura A. Carlson is the 29th president of the University of Delaware, where she leads the university in addressing the needs of Delaware and society at large through research, education and impact.  She joined UD as provost in 2022 and focused on expanding access by diversifying enrollment pathways and advancing an integrated university-wide strategy for academic excellence.

A scholar of spatial cognition and psychology of language, Carlson has spent her career studying how people mentally represent the world around them — offering a lens on how people think, and a foundation for questions about what remains distinctly human as AI reshapes how we learn and know. A fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, her research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, and takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on collaboration among computer science, engineering, architecture, geography and linguistics.
Before joining UD, Carlson spent 28 years at the University of Notre Dame, where she held several leadership roles alongside her academic appointment as a professor of psychology. She has received several teaching awards, including the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C. Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.

Carlson is a cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College, where she designed her own major studying the psychology of language through an interdisciplinary set of courses in psychology, anthropology, computer science, and education.  Upon graduation, she taught 4th grade in New Hampshire for two years before resuming her education, earning a master degrees from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.