When Queen Máxima of the Netherlands visited San Francisco in 2022 to celebrate her country’s economic ties with the US, both prof Ron Mangun and prof Tamara Swaab of the University of California were invited as guests and also joined the royal reception at San Francisco City Hall. 

Ron and Tamara are both partners in consulting firm XtraAdvice and have been supporting the U.S. release of a Dutch-developed application distributed by Games for Health. This digital diary application helps those who survive critical illnesses recover more quickly and cope with the long-term physical, cognitive and psychiatric impairments that commonly occur after hospitalization in intensive care units. In addition to their academic appointments in the Department of Psychology, Ron and Tamara are also faculty at the University of California Davis Center for Mind and Brain. Ron, who directs the center and is a professor of neurology at the UC Davis School of Medicine, studies attention. Tamara’s research focuses on how our brains comprehend language.