Ron Sun is a cognitive scientist investigating the fundamental nature of the human mind, using various methodologies of cognitive science, and in particular computational modeling, as means of forging mechanistic, process-based theories of the mind (especially comprehensive computational theories such as cognitive architectures). He has played a leading role early on in developing hybrid neural-symbolic (neurosymbolic) systems for cognitive modeling, and he is currently known for his work on the Clarion cognitive architecture. He has published more than 150 technical papers in journals such as Psychological Review, Cognitive Science, Artificial Intelligence, and Neural Networks, as well as 12 books by MIT Press, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and so on. His recent books include: Anatomy of the Mind (Oxford University Press), Grounding Social Sciences in Cognitive Sciences (MIT Press), and Cambridge Handbook of Computational Cognitive Sciences (Cambridge University Press).

He has held many leadership positions within the field, including the general chair and the program chair of the Cognitive Science Society Annual Conference in 2006 and the program chair of the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks in 2007. He was the founding co-editor-in-chief of the journal Cognitive Systems Research, and also serves on the editorial boards of Neural Networks, Connection Science, Cognitive Computation, and many more. He served on the Governing Board of the Cognitive Science Society, and the Board of Governors of the International Neural Network Society. He served as President of the International Neural Network Society for the two-year term of 2011-2012. 

He has been an invited, plenary, or keynote speaker at many conferences and institutions. He received the 1991 David Marr Award from the Cognitive Science Society (at the Thirteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society), and received the 2008 Hebb Award from the International Neural Networks Society. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science (APS, for "sustained and outstanding contributions to psychological science"), and so on.