DATA News: September 2017

 


Administrative Updates & Announcements

We are pleased to announce that Rachel Goeller has accepted the offer for the position of Associate Director of Graduate Studies. Rachel has been working in the department for the last eight years, more recently as an administrative assistant for Instruction and Graduate Program.

If you need assistance with anything related to educational technology, please contact us at help@umn.edu with the subject FOR T2 CLA PSYC, stop by N211 Elliott, or give us a call at 612-626-7531.


Awards & Accomplishments

Professor Gordon Legge presented a keynote address at Vision 2017, a triennial international conference devoted to research on low vision. The conference was held in The Hague from June 25-29. Gordon participated in the opening ceremony along with Princess Margriet of the Netherlands.

Professor Mark Snyder, McKnight Presidential Chair in Psychology, and his research on volunteerism and other forms of pro-social action are featured in an interview with EPOCA, Brazil's weekly news magazine. Here is a link to the article. (FYI - the Chrome browser will translate the interview from Portuguese to English)

Psychology graduate students Julia Longenecker, Lauren Mitchell, Viann Nguyen-Feng, and Melinda Schreiner have been awarded the Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship for 2017-2018.

I/O psychology area graduate Brenton Wiernik (Advisors: Deniz Ones and John Campbell) received an honorable mention for the University of Minnesota Best Dissertation Award. His thesis was titled “The Nomological Network of Classic and Contemporary Career Preferences”. Brenton is currently a post-doc at Ghent University, funded by the Belgian American Educational Foundation.

Ying-Zi Xiong, a postdoctoral research associate, working with Gordon Legge on studies of vision and reading was the recipient of the Best Poster Award at Vision 2017, the triennial international conference on low-vision research, held in The Hague, Netherlands, in June.


Grants

Professor Deniz Ones received a multi-million dollar grant to direct a field study to develop mobile sensor technology to predict and measure job performance. Read more here.

Associate Professor Moin Syed (along with Katrice Albert, Toyia Younger, Samuel B. Mukasa, and Robert B. McMaster) has been awarded a $3.7 million grant from the National Science Foundation to continue the work of the Northstar STEM Alliance, a consortium of Minnesota colleges and universities focused on increasing the college graduation rates of under-represented ethnic minority students in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) majors.

NSF has awarded a five-year predoctoral training grant to a program jointly sponsored by the Center for Cognitive Sciences (CCS) and the Center for Applied and Translational Sensory Science (CATSS). The program is called “Graduate training program in sensory science: Optimizing the information available for mind and brain.” The PI is Professor Victoria Interrante (Computer Science), with co-PIs professors Peggy Nelson (Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences), Andrew Oxenham (Psychology) and Gordon Legge (Psychology). The goal of this training program is to unite a fundamental understanding of basic sensory science (vision, audition, motor control, speech and language) with deep technical expertise in engineering, computer science, and other related fields. The program is expected to enroll six to eight trainees each year.


Visiting Scholars

Bengianni Pizzirani, a graduate student from Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, is visiting during the fall 2017 semester to work with Jeff Simpson's lab group. He is being funded by an Endeavor Scholarship.


Upcoming Events

Wondering what you can do with your major in Psychology?
You're not alone! Visit the PsyCareer Exploration Fair to talk to alumni about various psychology career pathways. Stop by as your schedule allows! Light refreshments provided.

When: September 20th, 2017 6-7pm
Where: Elliott Hall N219
RSVP.

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