Sonja Smets facts for kids

Sonja Smets is a smart scientist from Belgium and the Netherlands. She studies logic, which is about how we reason. She also studies epistemology, which is about how we gain knowledge.

Sonja is well-known for her ideas on how people change their minds. She also works with a special kind of logic called quantum logic. She is a professor at the University of Amsterdam. There, she teaches about logic and knowledge. From 2016 to 2021, she was the director of a big research center. It's called the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation. She also works with both science and philosophy students. Sometimes, she teaches as a visiting professor in Norway.

Sonja Smets's Education and Career

Sonja Smets finished her highest degree, a doctorate, in 2001. She studied at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium. For her doctorate, she worked with a physicist named Diederik Aerts. She also worked with a psychologist named Liane Gabora. Her main project was about the logic of physical properties.

After getting her doctorate, she continued her research in Brussels. She also taught part-time until 2009. From 2009 to 2012, she was a research fellow in the Netherlands. She worked at the University of Groningen. In 2012, she moved to the University of Amsterdam. She became a full professor there in 2016.

From 2016 to 2021, Sonja led the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation. This is a major research center. In 2019, she also started teaching part-time in Norway. She became a professor at the University of Bergen. Since 2020, she has been a leader in a group called FoLLI. This group focuses on logic, language, and information.

Awards and Recognition

Sonja Smets has received several important awards for her work. In 2012, she won the Birkhoff–von Neumann Prize. This award was for her studies on quantum structures. These structures help us understand how things work at a very small level.

In 2015, she received the Hermann Lotze Prize. This award recognized her achievements in four areas. These areas include quantum cognition and quantum foundations. They also include belief revision and truth tracking.

In 2019, she was chosen to join the Academia Europaea. This is a group of top scientists and scholars in Europe. In 2022, she was also elected to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. This is a very respected academy in the Netherlands.