CU Psychology and Neuroscience Department News
May 2013
CU Psychology and
Neuroscience professor Don Weatherley (Clinical) is retiring after 53 years of service
to the department. Check out a few pictures from his retirement party.
CU Psychology and Neuroscience graduate student Laura Michaelson (Cognitive, mentored by Yuko Munakata) received the Sheryl R.
Young Memorial Scholarship for the 2013–2014 academic year. This competitive scholarship is awarded by
the family of Sheryl, who received her PhD from our department.
CU Psychology
and Neuroscience graduate student Shaw Ketels (Cognitive, mentored by Alice Healy and Matt
Jones) received a Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in STEM Education for his proposal,
“A New Approach to Teaching General Psychology at CU.” Read
more about the award.
April 2013
CU Psychology
and Neuroscience graduate student Jason Gwinn (Social, mentored by Chick Judd) was awarded a
Summer Fellowship by the CU-Boulder Graduate School. These competitive awards help the recipient to pursue
his or her dissertation research during the summer months.
CU Psychology and Neuroscience graduate student Courtney Stevens (Clinical)
and co-advisor Angel Bryan (Social) were in the popular press for a commentary they wrote
for American Journal of Health Promotion regarding methods to encourage people to exercise more.
Read the Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine
article.
CU Psychology and Neuroscience
graduate students Hollis Karoly, Courtney Stevens, and Rachel
Thayer (all Clinical, each co-mentored by Angela Bryan (Social) and Kent Hutchison (Clinical)) were
in the news for some research they conducted demonstrating that aerobic exercise might help prevent or
even reverse the damage heavy alcohol use does to the brain’s white matter. The research, originally
published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, drew
the notice of several media outlets. Read the LA Times article, the US News article, the Daily Camera article, or read the original research article.
CU Psychology
and Neuroscience professor Tor Wager (Cognitive) is in the news because of a paper
published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The research involved the use of
functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to identify an objective measure of pain in the brain.
This research generated a large amount of media interest. Read or listen to the NPR segment,
read the NBC News article, or read the NEJM
article.
March 2013
CU Psychology
and Neuroscience graduate student Jason Gwinn (Social) was in the news for a
paper (co-authored with Social faculty Charles Judd and Bernadette Park)
on the dehumanizing effects of social power to be published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.
He was interviewed about the research on the Colorado Public Radion program “Colorado Matters.”
Listen to the interview. There is also a www.colorado.edu news item about the research,
or read the original article.
CU Psychology and Neuroscience
graduate students Jenn Felder (Clinical, mentor Sona Dimidjian), Sarah Grover
(Social, co-mentors Tiffany Ito and Bernadette Park), and Mikaela Kinnear (Clinical, mentor
Erik Willcutt) received grants through the Beverly Sears Graduate Student Grants program. These competitive
awards are sponsored by the Graduate School to support the research, scholarship, and creative work of
graduate students from all departments. Read more about
the grant program.
CU Psychology and Neuroscience Distinguished Professor Steven Maier (Behavioral Neuroscience) is giving the invited Richard L. Solomon Distinguished
Lecture at the meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association (EPA)
in March in New York City. (Notably it has been 50 years since Solomon served as president of EPA and also was
one of Professor Maier’s PhD advisors.) Check out
the full schedule of the convention.
February 2013
CU Psychology and Neuroscience professor (Behavioral Neuroscience) and associate chair Theresa Hernández’s
name appeared in the latest issue of Women’s Health magazine as an expert answering a question
about acupressure. Read the question and answer in this excerpt
from the magazine (2nd question on the page).
January 2013
CU Psychology
and Neuroscience professor Tor Wager (Cognitive) is the male 2013 Young Investigator Award winner given by
the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. The purpose of the award “is to recognize outstanding contributions by
scientists early in their careers.” Read a little more about the award on
the CNS website.
CU Psychology and
Neuroscience professor Sona Dimidjian (Clinical) met with the Dalai Lama while attending the Mind
& Life meeting in India. Read more on the Dalai’s
website.
December 2012
CU Psychology
and Neuroscience Distinguished Professor Linda Watkins (Behavioral Neuroscience) was in the
popular press in an announcement that she and her biomedical spinoff company are collaborating with a local
veterinarian to test a new gene therapy for addressing chronic pain in dogs. Ultimately she hopes
the therapy could prove useful in humans. Read
the CU
press release or the Daily Camera article.
CU Psychology
and Neuroscience graduate student Yoni Ashar (Clinical) was interviewed in an article in the Daily
Camera about neurology and religion, more specifically about a local rabbi undergoing an fMRI while
contemplating God’s name. Read the article
for more details.
CU Psychology
and Neuroscience professor Tor Wager (Cognitive) was in the popular media, being interviewed on
Australia’s version of the news program 60 Minutes for his research on the neural signature of
placebo effects. Check out the interview
(approximately 9 minutes into the program).
November 2012
CU Psychology and
Neuroscience professor Josh Correll (Social) was interviewed on the Colorado Public Radio show
“Colorado Matters” about his research indicating police officers show a hierarchy of racial bias
in the context of a video game where the task is to shoot people holding a gun. Listen to the interview
on the Colorado Public Radio website.
CU Psychology and Neuroscience graduate student Clare Sims (Cognitive), undergraduate Savannah
Schilling (not pictured), and professor Eliana Colunga (Cognitive) received a Paper of Excellence
award from the IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning for
their paper, “Interactions in the Development of Skilled Word Learning in Neural Networks
and Toddlers.” Check out all the winners.
CU Psychology and Neuroscience professor Don Cooper (Behavioral Genetics, Behavioral
Neuroscience, and Institute for Behavioral Genetics fellow) was
a Grand Challenges Exploration
winner, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Read more about the award in
the CU press release.
October 2012
CU Psychology and
Neuroscience professor Josh Correll (Social), College Professor of Distinction Chick
Judd (Social), Professors Bernadette Park and Leaf Van Boven (both Social), and Professor Tor Wager
(Cognitive) all received some press regarding their research in the latest issue of CU-Boulder’s
Arts and Sciences Magazine. Read the various articles (article 1, 2, 3).
CU Psychology and
Neuroscience professor Yuko Munakata (Cognitive), was elected
an APA Fellow in Division 7
(Developmental Psychology).
September 2012
CU Psychology and
Neuroscience Senior Instructor Diane Martichuski was appointed co-director for the
Boulder campus of the President’s Teaching and Learning
Collaborative (PTLC). From the PTLC
website: “The PTLC seeks to promote the practice of inquiry in teaching and measuring student
learning. The Collaborative assists University faculty in developing scholarly research projects
on teaching and learning intended for refereed publication.”
CU Psychology and
Neuroscience professor Angela Bryan (Social), was elected
an APA Fellow in Division 38
(Health Psychology).
CU Psychology
and Neuroscience postdoc Chris Loersch (Social) received the 2011 Best Paper Award
from the International Social Cognition
Network (ISCON) for
his and coauthor Keith Payne’s paper entitled “The situated inference model of priming:
An integrative account of construal, behavior, and goal priming,” published in Perspectives
on Psychological Science. According to the awards committee, “the paper exemplifies
in an outstanding fashion the value of the social cognition approach for social psychological
research.”
CU Psychology and Neuroscience College Professor of Distinction Alice
Healy (Cognitive) and Professor Matt Jones (Cognitive) have been awarded a grant from the
National Science Foundation which will examine the use
of “clickers” in the
teaching and learning of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics
(STEM).
August 2012
CU Psychology and Neuroscience Distinguished Professors Linda
Watkins and Steven Maier (both Behavioral Neuroscience) received a great deal of
press for a recent article published in the Journal of Neuroscience. This research, conducted
in collaboration with former Maier/Watkins postdoc Mark Hutchinson, now a Research Fellow at the
University Adelaide (Australia) School of Medical Sciences, demonstrated that the addictive properties
of morphine and heroin can be blocked without blocking their analgesic effects. Among the many news outlets
that picked up the story are the Washington Post, New Scientist, and Medical News Today. Read
the CU
press release, and/or the
original JN article.
CU Psychology and Neuroscience
Professor Vijay Mittal (Clinical) was in the popular press. An article about his research
on schizophrenia and potential early diagnosis appeared in the Denver Post. Read the
article.
CU Psychology and Neuroscience College Professor of Distinction Alice Healy
(Cognitive) and Professor Emeritus Lyle Bourne (Cognitive) are the editors of a book entitled Training
Cognition recently published by Psychology
Press. Read more about this volume.
July 2012
CU Psychology and
Neuroscience professor Matt Keller (Behavioral Genetics and IBG faculty fellow),
received the Behavior Genetics Association’s Fuller and Scott Early Career Award. This
award recognizes outstanding scientific accomplishments by a BGA member who is early in
his or her career.
Several CU Psychology and Neuroscience researchers in the Clinical area received awards from CU-Boulder’s Office for University Outreach for 2012–2013. Awardees were Professor Sona Dimidjian [project info], Adjunct Professor David Miklowitz [project info], Research Professor Emily Richardson [more info], and Research Associate Nomita Chhabildas [more info]. These awards provide funding for faculty projects designed specifically for external audiences.
June 2012
The research of CU
Psychology and Neuroscience Professor Richard Olson
(Cognitive and Behavioral Genetics) and colleagues is featured in CU-Boulder’s Arts &
Sciences Magazine. Rather than focused on a specific research paper, the article describes the kind
of research pursued at the Colorado Learning Disabilities Research Center of which Olson is the director.
Read the A&S article online.
The
research of CU Psychology and Neuroscience professor Leaf Van Boven (Social) and a colleague
is also featured in CU-Boulder’s Arts & Sciences Magazine. This research examined gender
differences in how emotional responses are remembered. After viewing emotional vignettes, there are no gender
differences in emotional response, nor are there differences after 20 minutes under conditions of low cognitive
load. However, after 20 minutes under conditions of cognitive load, males recall their emotional responses
as being less intense than they were immediately whereas females do not. These types of results may contribute
to the perpetuation of stereotypes. Read the A&S article online.
May 2012
CU Psychology and Neuroscience
College Professor of Distinction Chick Judd (Social) and Professor Gary
McClelland (Social) “retired” from teaching the department’s graduate statistics class
after 29 years. A party was held in their honor at the Koenig Alumni Center on campus. There are
photos
from the retirement event and a slide show presentation
(here in pdf form) that was shown.
CU Psychology and Neuroscience graduate student Elizabeth Woodruff (Behavioral Neuroscience, mentored by Bob Spencer) received the Sheryl R.
Young Memorial Scholarship for the 2012–2013 academic year. This competitive scholarship is awarded by
the family of Sheryl, who received her PhD from our department.
CU Psychology and Neuroscience postdoc Jane Stout (Social) received a Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in STEM Education (Faculty Award). This
grant, as part of the iSTEM program, was awarded for her proposal to examine the potential reasons for the gender
gap in STEM participation. (Read more about the iSTEM program.)
CU Psychology and
Neuroscience staff member and undergraduate advisor Dan Robinson received the
National Award for Advising Technology Innovation from
the National Academic Advising Association. The
award is for Dan’s design and construction of the “Planet DARS” website, a site that
is used by academic advisors all over campus to navigate the labyrinth that is the Degree
Audit Reporting System (DARS). Check out the list
of past and present winners.
April 2012
CU Psychology and Neuroscience
graduate students Sara Blaine (Behavioral Neuroscience, mentored by Kent Hutchison)
and Shaw Ketels (Cognitive, mentored by Alice Healy) were chosen to be Lead Graduate Teachers
for the upcoming academic year. Read more about the Graduate
Teacher Program.
CU Psychology and Neuroscience
graduate student Sarah Banchefsky (Social, mentored by Bernadette Park) was chosen to receive the 2012
Dorothy Martin Doctoral Student Award. Read
more about the award.
CU Psychology and Neuroscience professors Sona Dimidjian
(Clinical) and Tina Wagers (Senior Instructor) received the 2012 Dorothy Martin Woman Faculty
Award for their outstanding teaching, research and service activities in support of women and women’s issues.
The award honors women who exemplify the ideals of Professor Emerita Dorothy Martin, a faculty member of
the CU-Boulder psychology department for 46 years who was instrumental in establishing the first CU Women’s
Center in 1964.
CU Psychology and Neuroscience
graduate student Lauren Chun (Behavioral Neuroscience, mentored by Bob Spencer) received a 2012
Summer Research Fellowship from the Endocrine Society. The fellowship consists of a stipend to support a research
project with Professor Bob Spencer, as well as funds for her to travel to the Society’s 94th annual
meeting in Houston in June.
CU Psychology and Neuroscience graduate
student Blair Kleiber (Clinical, mentored by Sona Dimidjian)
received the Ted Volsky Memorial Award through the Beverly Sears Graduate Student Grant
program. These competitive awards are sponsored by the Graduate School to support the
research, scholarship and creative work of graduate students from all departments.
Read more about the grant program.
March 2012
CU Psychology and Neuroscience professors
Joanna Arch (Clinical) and Don Cooper (Behavioral
Genetics, Behavioral Neuroscience, and Institute for Behavioral Genetics fellow) have been chosen to
receive funds from CU-Boulder’s Innovative Seed Grant Program (IGP). Only one of every six proposals
is being funded this coming year. Read more about the program.
February 2012
A recent
article co-authored by CU Psychology and Neuroscience professor Tor Wager (Cognitive) and
colleagues on placebo effects is receiving some popular press. The research, published in Psychological
Science, suggests that the pain reduction often associated with being distracted occurs in a different
brain area than the standard placebo effect, contrary to what was commonly believed. Read the original article, or
the Science Daily
news item, or the FARS News
news item.
January 2012
CU Psychology and Neuroscience
College Professor of Distinction Chick Judd (Social) and Professor Gary
McClelland (Social) were named co-recipients of the 2012 Jacob Cohen Award for Distinguished
Contributions to Teaching and Mentoring, given by Division 5 of the American Psychological
Association (APA). They have been invited to address the symposium at which the award will be given at
the APA convention in Orlando in August.
The research of CU Psychology
and Neuroscience professor Daniel Barth (Behavioral Neuroscience) and graduate
student Krista Rodgers (also BN) has led to the development of a potential novel
therapy for the treatment of post-traumatic brain injury (TBI). Read the CU Technology Transfer
Office press
release.
CU Psychology and Neuroscience Distinguished Professor Linda Watkins (Behavioral
Neuroscience) was named the CU-Boulder “Inventor of the Year” by the University of
Colorado Technology Transfer Office for developing “both novel drugs and new uses of known
drugs targeting various disorders with unmet medical needs.” Read more about
the award
and other winners.
