Announcements
Faculty Promotions
The Department of Psychology is pleased to announce the promotion to Professor of Daniel Messenger and Patrice Saab and the promotion to Associate Professor of Jill Ehrenreich May. Congratulations also go to Monica Webb Hooper who received the Scholarly & Creative Activities Award for Junior Faculty Award.
Jack Block Award
Charles S. Carver, Distinguished professor of psychology at the University of Miami, received the Jack Block award given by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), the largest organization of social and personality psychologists in the world. The honor is in recognition of his research accomplishments over the past thirty years which have shaped modern personality psychology. The award was presented to Carver at the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology on January 26, 2012, in San Diego, California.
Psychology Grad Student Represents Clinical Science
Hallie Bregman, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Psychology's Child Division working in Dr. Kristin Lindahl's lab, was elected as the national representative for Clinical Science for the American Psychological Association's Science Student Council (2010-2012) and was then elected to serve as the Chair of the SSC for a one-year term, 2011-2012. Hallie and the SSC participated in a day of advocacy on Capitol Hill, where each SSC representative met with staff members of their local Senators and Representatives to lobby for National Institute of Health (NIH) funding. Additionally, Hallie chaired two of the six symposia offered by the SSC at the 2011 APA Convention, including a program on nontraditional career options for science-oriented students and a program on the role of advocacy in the dissemination of research findings. Hallie attends two SSC meetings each year in Washington, D.C. to discuss ideas and implement plans.
Graduate Student Wins NSF Fellowship
Eric J. Pedersen, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Psychology's Evolution and Behavior emphasis and a researcher in Professor Michael McCullough's Evolution and Human Behavior Laboratory, has won a highly competitive Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF) from the National Science Foundation. According to the NSF, Pedersen's selection for the NSF Fellowship was based on his outstanding abilities and accomplishments, as well as his potential to contribute to strengthening the vitality of the US science and engineering enterprise. The stipend for the 2011-2012 Fellowship Year is $30,000.
Psychology Welcomes New Faculty
Kiara R. Timpano, Ph.D.- Assistant Professor
Florida State University, 2009 - Dr. Kiara Timpano has recently joined the Department of Psychology at the University of Miami as an assistant professor in the Adult Division, and is director of the Program for Anxiety, Stress, and OCD (PASO). Her primary research interests lie in understanding integrative risk models that play a role in the etiology, comorbidity, and maintenance of anxiety and obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders. Dr. Timpano received her Ph.D from the Florida State University in 2009. She completed a clinical internship at the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, where she also worked as a post-doctoral clinical research fellow in the OCD and Related Disorders Program. Her research examines vulnerability factors for disorders within the anxiety and OC spectrum across psychological, environmental, and biological domains within a translational research framework.
Amishi Jha, Ph.D.- Associate Professor
University of California-Davis, 1998 - Dr. Amishi Jha recently joined the Department of Psychology at the University of Miami as an associate professor in the Health Division and will be helping spearhead the development of fMRI facilities on the Coral Gables Campus. Her research program is guided by the hypothesis that psychological health, mental wellness, and resilience rely on optimal neural functioning of attention and working memory. She uses several cognitive neuroscience techniques including behavioral methods, event-related potentials, and functional MRI to investigate these systems in humans. Dr. Jha received her Ph.D. from the University of California-Davis in 1998. She completed a two year NIMH post-doc at Duke University and served on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Psychology and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience from 2002 to 2010. From a translational research perspective, Dr. Jha investigates how core selection processes may be improved with mental training involving mindfulness-based techniques, other forms of meditation/contemplative training, and positive psychological interventions.
2010 Graduate Student Awards
- Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award:
- Radha Carlson and Jessica Jacobson
- Kirk R. Danhour Memorial Award:
- Dan Fulford, Kristen Farrell, Betty Lai
- Dr. Carol Alson-Finement Award:
- Carolyn Snell
- Bertha Weber Award:
- Katie Chipungu
- Peter Mundy CARD Award for Clinical Research in Autism:
- Drew Coman
- Keith Scott CARD Award for Developmental Research in Autism:
- Camilla Hileman
New Grants
Neil Schneiderman is the Principal Investigator of the University of Miami Field Center for the NIH funded Hispanic Community Health Study. This $61 million 6.5 year project will be the largest long-term epidemiological study of health and disease in Latin Americans living in the United States. With a budget of $10 million the Miami site will provide physical examinations and interviews to 4000 Miami Hispanic/Latinos between 18 and 74 years. Whereas the Miami site is expected to examine a preponderance of Cuban Americans as well as a fair number of South and Central Americans, the other sites in San Diego, New York, and Chicago will focus primarily on Mexican, Puerto Rican or South/Central Americans.