Jyotsna Vaid is Professor of Psychology in the Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience and Diversity Science areas, and affiliated with the Women's and Gender Studies Degree Program and the Texas A&M Institute for Neuroscience. Vaid received her Ph.D. in experimental psychology at McGill University and subsequently did post-doctoral research at Michigan State University, the Center for Research in Language at UC San Diego, and the Language and Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies. 

Vaid's research examines cognitive and neurocognitive aspects of different types of language experience such as early vs. late onset of bilingualism, informal and formal translation experience, hand dominance in sign, and literacy in different writing systems. Her work has also examined processing implications of differences across languages in typological characteristics, including the semantics of possessive constructions, evidentiality, and the middle voice. Another line of her research examines the relationship between figurative and creative language use. 

Most recently, she has published a set of papers on knowledge production and the social construction of merit in academia, looking in particular at how gender, race, and language experience figure in psychological inquiry.  

Vaid is Director of the Language and Cognition Laboratory.  
She is founding editor of the Committee on South Asian Women Bulletin (1983-1994) and Co-Founding Editor (with Benedetta Bassetti and Vivian Cook) of the journal Writing Systems Research (2009-2020). Vaid is Associate Editor of the Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science, and on the editorial board of the Journal of Neurolinguistics; Laterality; the Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, and International Perspectives in Psychology.