Melissa Hines facts for kids

Melissa Hines is a scientist who studies the brain (a neuroscientist). She is a Professor at the University of Cambridge in England. Dr. Hines researches how boys and girls become different. She focuses on how experiences before and after birth affect the brain and how people act.

Learning and Early Career

Melissa Hines studied Psychology at Princeton University. She was part of the first group of women to attend Princeton as undergraduate students. This might have made her interested in how gender develops.

She later earned her PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Her research there looked at how women's behavior was affected if their mothers had taken certain hormones during pregnancy.

After her PhD, Dr. Hines did more research at the UCLA Brain Research Institute. She studied how hormones influence brain development in animals. She also worked as a visiting scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. UCLA recognized her excellent teaching with an award. She then became a professor at UCLA. During this time, she also trained to become a licensed clinical psychologist.

Research on Gender Development

In 1996, Dr. Hines moved to the UK and became a Professor of Psychology at City University. She is a certified counseling psychologist in the UK. In 2006, she joined the University of Cambridge and Churchill College, Cambridge. She now leads the Gender Development Research Centre at the University of Cambridge.

Her main research looks at why there are differences between sexes in human brains and behavior. She and another researcher, Alexander, found that male and female monkeys prefer different toys. This is similar to what is seen in children. They suggested that toy preferences can happen naturally, even without social influences.

Other studies by Dr. Hines show that girls with higher levels of a hormone called testosterone are less interested in dolls. Instead, they are more interested in toy vehicles. She has discussed her findings with other scientists who also study hormones and gender development. Sometimes their results are similar, and sometimes they find different things.

Sharing Her Work

Dr. Hines was the President of the International Academy of Sex Research. She wrote a book called Brain Gender, which came out in 2004.

She has spoken at many events, like the "Women's Word" festival at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge in 2011. In 2014, she was a speaker at the Cambridge Science Festival. She also writes articles for The Conversation, a website where experts share their knowledge.