Pooja Reddy Nakamura

Pooja Reddy Nakamura is a principal researcher at AIR. Dr. Nakamura’s work focuses on the processes underpinning successful literacy development in multilingual contexts of the developing world. She is currently principal investigator of a study funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) identifying the strongest predictors of reading success in urban slums and remote villages of India. She has also been involved in developing research studies in Egypt and Zambia to better understand the learning mechanisms involved in the development of literacy in diverse scripts and complex multilingual environments.

Previously, Dr. Nakamura has worked at the Human Development Lab at Carnegie Mellon University. In this position, she designed a one-year English as a Second Language (ESL) literacy curriculum for educational games on mobile phones for children in rural India. She has also taught a variety of language courses at the university level, including English as a Second Language and Japanese as a Foreign Language. She has presented her work at international conferences and authored peer-reviewed articles. She currently serves on the editorial board of the journal, Reading and Writing.