Barbara Wanchisen, Ph.D., serves as the Director of both the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences and the Board on Human-Systems Integration at the National Research Council in Washington, D.C. She received a B.A. in English and Philosophy from Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania, an M.A. in Literature from Villanova University, and her doctorate in Experimental Psychology from Temple University.

She is a long-standing member of the Psychonomic Society, the Association for Behavior Analysis - International, and the American Psychological Association, where she is a Fellow of Division 25 (Behavior Analysis). She has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior and The Behavior Analyst while also serving as a guest reviewer of a number of other journals.

From November 2001 until April 2008, Wanchisen was the executive director of a non-profit advocacy organization called the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological, & Cognitive Sciences in Washington, DC., and, during that tenure, she was instrumental in the founding of the Federation's Foundation for the Advancement of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, which assumed the educational mission of the Federation. Previously, Wanchisen was Professor in the Department of Psychology and Director of the college-wide Honors Program at Baldwin-Wallace College, Cleveland, Ohio, USA.