Dr. Wind Cowles

Director of Data, Research, and Teaching

With over 20 years of experience in research and leadership in higher education, Dr. Wind Cowles leads the development and implementation of strategic initiatives involving research and teaching services, including in research data and digital scholarship.  She leads a division of librarians and other information professionals who provide services, training, and technological infrastructure to advance research and scholarship, providing strategic direction and oversight of three Library branches covering the sciences, social sciences, and engineering. A member of the Princeton University Library senior leadership team, Wind is a strong advocate for open scholarship and the democratization of access to information. As the head of the Princeton Research Data Service, she manages a team of specialists who enable the long-term value of research data through effective research data management, open research practices, and long-term preservation and re-use. 

Before joining Princeton University, Wind worked at the National Institutes of Health, where she oversaw the review of grant applications related to language, communication, and Alzheimer’s disease. Prior to NIH, Wind was an Associate Professor in Linguistics at the University of Florida and Director of the Language and Cognition Lab. She received her PhD in Cognitive Science and Linguistics from UC San Diego, in addition to an MA in Linguistics. She received a BA in Linguistics from the University of Southern California, with minors in Neuroscience and English-Creative Writing.