Director of Programs, Natural Learning Initiative

Nilda Cosco, PhD, is Director of Programs at NLI, Research Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, and former Director of the Center for Universal Design. She is responsible for the conceptualization and management of NLI comprehensive projects, design programming, research of outdoor environments for children with and without disabilities, and evaluation programs applied to outdoor play and learning environments for children, including those with special needs.  She is also responsible for establishing professional development certificates and activities for designers, educators, and community members interested in creating high quality outdoor environments for children and families, development of printed and online dissemination materials, and coordination of state-wide comprehensive projects (design, environmental intervention, training, and evaluation) including Preventing Obesity by Design (POD).

Dr. Cosco holds a degree in Educational Psychology from Universidad del Salvador, Buenos Aires, Argentina and a Ph.D. in Landscape Architecture from Heriot Watt University/Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland. Her primary research interest is the impact of outdoor environments on child and family health outcomes such as healthy nutrition, active lifestyles, attention functioning, and overall wellbeing, particularly as they relate to natural components of the built environment. She is principal investigator (PI) for the USDA-NIFA randomized controlled trial Childcare Outdoor Learning Environments as Active Food Systems: Effectiveness of the Preventing Obesity by Design (POD) Gardening Component.

Prior to NLI, Nilda was director of the National Lekotek Center, Buenos Aries, serving children with special needs, and consultant to a similar facility in Säo Paulo, Brazil. She was a member of the eight-country Growing Up in Cities (GUIC) action research project sponsored by UNESCO, and co-director of the Buenos Aires project with Professor Moore. She was former Vice President for the Latin American International Association for the Child’s Right to Play (now International Play Association, IPA). Prior to launching NLI, Dr. Cosco and Professor Moore collaborated with Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, contributing their knowledge of outdoor play environments to innovative design projects such as Teardrop Park, Battery Park City, NYC; Union Square, NYC; Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brooklyn, NYC; A Gathering Place for Tulsa, OK; and the Smith Family Waterfront, Boston Children’s Museum, and the adjacent Martin’s Park in Boston.

Nilda spent her early childhood living with her grandparents in Mercedes, a typical provincial city in the “big sky” Pampa region of Argentina, where she learned to fish with her Italian heritage grandfather in a boat created in her name. At age seven, she moved with her parents to the big city of Buenos Aires, where contact with nature was provided by the vegetated patios and balconies of high-rise apartments and the great parks and urban plazas of the city.