empirical methodology, and computational insight. The resulting work has shaped our understanding of learning, reasoning, language, and the very nature of mental representation. Gentner has made important contributions to the study of verbs, mental models, similarity, language and thought, as well as word learning in children. Underlying this diverse body of work is a common thread: an interest in how it is that we can represent and reason about relationships, such as that between the arguments of a relational predicate, or between two models that are superficially distinct, yet share common underlying structure. It's not surprising, then, that this year's recipient has also been a pioneer in the contemporary study of analogical reasoning, and it is this work for which she is best known. Gentner has influenced the field not only through her prolific experimental work with both children and adults, but also for the general theory of analogical reasoning that she developed and tested alongside students and collaborators: Structure Mapping Theory. A central insight of this theory is that analogies consist of matching relational structures between a base domain and a target domain. The properties of objects in the domains need not match, and deeply nested relational structures are favored over independent relations. In the analogy between heat flow and water flow, for example, the relevant similarities involve a flow of some quantity from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure, even though the domains differ in many superficial respects. This theory was implemented in the Structure-Mapping Engine (SME), which both formalized the theory and offered a computationally-tractable algorithm for carrying out the process of mapping structures and drawing inferences. Gentner's work has not been restricted to analogical reasoning, however, and her influential edited volumes – on mental models in 1983, on analogical reasoning in 2001, and on language and thought in 2003, attest to the breadth of her interests and impact.” Early life and education Gentner was born in San Diego, California. She received her bachelor's degree in physics from UC Berkeley during the 1970s and did graduate work in physics at the University of Chicago, before discovering the field of cognitive psychology. After a year studying cognitive science at U. Chicago, Gentner taught first grade for two years in Ghana, sparking an enduring interest in cognitive development. She then entered the graduate program at UC San Diego working with Don Norman and David Rumelhart, receiving