Sonia Bansal is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland (Maryland Psychiatric Research Center), where she is involved in studies on cognitive and perceptual deficits in schizophrenia. She was born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya and moved to Iowa, USA to pursue her BSc. in Psychology and Neuroscience at Drake University, following which she received a MSc. in Biotechnology at Johns Hopkins University (Maryland, USA).  She completed her PhD in Neuroscience at George Mason University (Virginia, USA) studying the efference copy system and predictive mechanism-related visuomotor behavior in schizophrenia. Prior to that, she worked at the Washington DC VA Medical Center, where she developed eye-tracking methods to examine how disturbances in visual processing relate to cognitive and social function in veterans with schizophrenia. Her research interests lie in translating basic science to investigate how a breakdown in sensorimotor mechanisms can lead to perceptual and cognitive deficits in schizophrenia and related neuropsychiatric disorders.