Lindsay Portnoy joined the U.S. National Science Foundation as an SBIR/STTR program director in 2023. Lindsay is a cognitive scientist and professor at Northeastern University. She has authored dozens of articles, chapters and two books, "Designed to Learn: Using Design Thinking to Bring Purpose and Passion to the Classroom" and "Game On? Brain On! The Surprising Relationship Between Play and Gray (Matter)." She is a co-founder of Killer Snails, an immersive science learning company supported by NSF. Lindsay has over two decades of experience in the study and instruction of cognition, human development and assessment of teaching and learning from birth through adolescence. In 2018, Lindsay received the Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer of the Year Award from the New York District Office of the U.S. Small Business Administration. She has served as Board of Education president and elected trustee, member of the World Economic Forum's Expert Network, is a former Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Emerging Leader, and an Assessment Fellow at Hunter College in New York. Lindsay has a doctorate in educational psychology from Fordham University