Makes learning feel rewarding and fun.
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Joshua Sandry, Ph.D., is Professor in the Department of Psychology at Montclair State University, a position he has held since 2023 following promotions from Associate Professor (2021–2023) and Assistant Professor (2015–2021). He previously served as Visiting Scientist at Kessler Foundation (2015–2017), Research Assistant at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School (2015–2016), and Adjunct Faculty at Montclair State University (2014–2015). Sandry directs the Cognition and Neurocognitive Disorders Research Laboratory. His academic background includes a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from New Mexico State University (2013), M.A. in Experimental Psychology from New Mexico State University (2010), B.S. in Psychology (summa cum laude) from East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania (2007), A.A. in Humanities & Social Science from County College of Morris, and visiting scholar status at University of Missouri–Columbia (2012).
Sandry's research examines how attention and memory interact to create long-term memory representations in healthy and clinical populations, with a focus on multiple sclerosis (MS) and traumatic brain injury (TBI). He has secured major funding as principal investigator, including NIH NINDS R01 grant (MPI with Sumowski, $2,418,756 direct costs, 2025–2030) for computational models of neurocognitive impairment in MS, National Multiple Sclerosis Society grants (2019–2023, $592,972 total), New Jersey Commission on Brain Injury Research (2020–2023, $382,761), and others from NIH NICHD Loan Repayment Program and private sources. Key publications include Sumowski & Sandry (2025), 'Multiple Sclerosis Cognitive Scale (MSCS): A brief psychometrically-robust metric of patient-reported cognitive difficulty,' Multiple Sclerosis Journal; Ricker, Cagna, Tong, Dobryakova, & Sandry (in press), 'Reward-based prioritization in working memory is distinct from recency and due to a resource trade-off,' Psychonomic Bulletin & Review; Lall, Pardo, & Sandry (in press), 'Relapsing-remitting MS semantic networks exhibit reduced efficiency, interconnectivity, and flexibility,' Multiple Sclerosis Journal: Experimental, Translational and Clinical; and Sandry et al. (2021), 'The Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT) is sensitive but...' Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders. Awards include the Neuropsychological Society Annual Graduate Student and Post-Doctoral Fellow Research Award (2022), NIMH Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience Fellowship (2015), and Kessler Foundation Fellow Inspiration Award (2015).
