Mary Gauvain is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology Emerita at the University of California, Riverside, where she also served as Co-Director of the UC Global Health Institute Center for Expertise on One Health: Water, Animals, Food, and Society (2013-2015), Co-Director of an interdisciplinary graduate training program (NSF-funded IGERT) focused on water, the environment and sustainability (2012-2019), and as Vice Chair and Chair (respectively) of the Academic Senate of the University of California system (2019-2021). She holds a Ph.D. in Developmental psychology (University of Utah), an M.A. in Sociology of Education (Stanford University), and a B.A. in Social Ecology (UC Irvine). Her research, funded by NSF, NIH, and the Spencer Foundation, examines social and cultural influences on cognitive development, in particular planning skills and spatial thinking. Her recent research focuses on social and cultural practices related to children's health and well-being and includes studies of concept development regarding water and food contamination among children in Sub-Saharan Africa (with Heidi Beebe, Ph.D.) and how exposure to smoke from wood burning fires relates to cognitive development (with R. L. Munroe, Ph.D.). She is the author of numerous publications as well as the books The Social Context of Cognitive Development (Guilford, 2001), Child and Adolescent Development in Cultural Context (with J. E. Lansford and R. D. French, APA, 2021), and Cognitive Development in Infancy and Childhood (Cambridge University Press, 2022). She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Association, American Educational Research Association, and the Association for Psychological Science.