Graduate Accomplishments
Autumn quarter 2011
The following MANY students completed their general exams and advanced to candidacy for the Ph.D. in Autumn 2011: Colin Beam (Cognition and Perception with John Miyamoto), Rick Cruz (Child Clinical with Kevin King), Amanda Gilmore (Adult Clinical with Bill George), Joel Grow (Adult Clinical with Mary Larimer), Sungjun Joo (Cognition and Perception with Scott Murray), Earnest Kim (Behavioral Neuroscience with Jeansok Kim), Jeff Lin (Cognition and Perception with Geoff Boynton), Kimberly Nelson (Adult Clinical with Jane Simoni), Erik Runeson (Cognition and Perception with Scott Murray), J. Oliver Siy (Social Psychology and Personality with Sapna Cheryan), Kate Sullivan (Child Clinical with Wendy Stone), Josh Tabak (Social Psychology and Personality with Sapna Cheryan), and Erin Ward-Ciesielski (Adult Clinical with Marsha Linehan).
Congratulations to our Autumn quarter 2011 Master’s recipients: Leona Dondi (Social Psychology and Personality with Cheryl Kaiser), Jeremy Luk (Child Clinical with Kevin King), Lyndsey Moran (Child Clinical with Liliana Lengu), Karen Pang (Child Clinical with Elizabeth McCauley and Lynn Fainsilber Katz), and Christopher Schroth (Social Psychology and Personality with Janxin Leu).
During Autumn quarter 2011, we had two students Kelly Koo (Adult Clinical with Bill George) and Josh Tabak (Social Psychology and Personality with Sapna Cheryan) complete the Diversity Science Specialization. Read about how the Specialization emphasized their training.
Emily Blumenthal (Developmental with Jessica Sommerville), successfully defended her dissertation, titled "An electrophysiological study of the perception and representation of Michottean launching events." Em is currently a post-doctoral fellow at UC San Diego with Karen Dobkins.
Winter quarter 2012
Daniel Byrd (UW Ph.D. 2010) was interviewed for a CNN’s “In America” blog. "Post-Racial? Americans and Race in the Age of Obama," released Monday by the nonprofit Greenlining Institute, explores the link between white survey respondents' perception of blacks and whether they believed discrimination to be a major problem in today's society. Daniel is the research director of Greenlining Institute and the study’s primary author.
Jeremy Luk (Child Clinical with Kevin King), was selected as a junior mentor for the 2012 Society for Research on Adolescence Young Scholars Program. This honor reflects his “strong academic competence, impressive research and publication records, as well as (his) passion to help others succeed.” He will mentor young scholars and also interact with senior researchers in the field of adolescent development.
Erin Ward-Ciesielski (Adult Clinical with Marsha Linehan), won The Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology 2011 Dissertation Award. Her dissertation is “Brief Skills Training for Suicidal Individuals”. The Society told Erin that “this was a particularly competitive year, as we received 40 applications, more than twice the number we received in past years.” She also won the Morton Silverman Student Award, given by the American Association of Suicidology. The Silverman Award is for a paper written by a student on a topic directly related to the field of Suicidology. Erin’s paper is entitled "Development of a brief Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills-based intervention for non-treatment-seeking suicidal individuals – An open pilot feasibility study."
Andy Paves (Adult Clinical with Mary Larimer), was interviewed for a Seattle Times Pacific Northwest cover story on cage fighting.
Two Behavioral Neuroscience students completed their general exams and advanced to candidacy during winter quarter 2012: Robyn Laing (Jaime Olavarria) and Yong Sang Jo (Sheri Mizumori).
Also during winter quarter 2012, Ben Drury (Social Psychology and Personality with Sapna Cheryan/Cheryl Kaiser), completed the Diversity Science Specialization.
Josh Tabak (Social Psychology and Personality with Sapna Cheryan), became the sixth graduate student to complete a Quantitative Minor.
Jeff Lin (Cognition and Perception with Geoff Boynton), successfully defended his dissertation “Effects of attention without perceptual awareness on motor responses, memory and behavior.” He is currently working at Riot Games in Santa Monica, California, as a Research Scientist and Game Designer to improve the gameplay experience of League of Legends.
Mara Sedlins (Social Psychology and Personality with Yuichi Soda), defended her dissertation “The Automatic Social Categorization Test: Validating a New Measure.” She presented several studies from her dissertation at the Association for Psychological Science on May 27, 2012 in Chicago as part of a symposium titled "Black, White, or Shades of Gray: Categorical Versus Continuous Social Perception," chaired by Lori Wu Malahy (Social Psychology and Personality with Yuichi Shoda). Mara has also been working at Microsoft Research on a project examining the ways people evaluate and make sense of infographics.
Spring quarter 2012
Teri Kirby [link to article] (Social Psychology and Personality with Tony Greenwald), Laura Brady [link to article] (Social Psychology and Personality with Cheryl Kaiser), and Sarah Grover (recent undergraduate with Sapna Cheryan), each received NSF Graduate Research Fellowships.
Joy Kawamura’s (Child Clinical with Lynn Fainsilber Katz), abstract was recognized as a Meritorious Student Abstract by the Society of Behavioral Medicine. She submitted an abstract titled "Parenting in the context of childhood cancer: The relation between parental psychological control and internalizing problems for survivors of leukemia" to the Society’s conference.
Peter Kahn and his Developmental students Solace Shen and Heather Gary (along with other collaborators) won the Best Paper award at the International Conference of Human-Robot Interaction 2012. The paper is titled: “Do People Hold a Humanoid Robot Morally Accountable for the Harm it Causes.” Solace presented the paper at the conference.
UW Today also featured professor Kahn and his research team in the exploration of how children interact socially with a humanoid robot. "In developing robot nannies, we should be concerned with how we might be dumbing down relationships and stunting the emotional and intellectual growth of children." Co-authors at UW are Nathan Freier, Rachel Severson (Ph.D. 2010), Jolina Ruckert and Solace Shen.
Joshua Tabak's research as a psychology graduate student, was in many local and national media outlets when he publshed a high profile paper on automatical judements.After seeing faces for less than a blink of an eye, college students have accuracy greater than mere chance in judging others’ sexual orientation. Their "gaydar" persisted even when they saw the photos upside-down, and gay versus straight judgments were more accurate for women’s faces than for men’s. http://www.washington.edu/news/articles/gaydar-automatic-and-more-accurate-for-w omens-faces-psychologists-find.
The Psychology Graduate Program participated in the 20th Annual Pacific Northwest Regional McNair/EIP/GO-MAP Research Conference's Graduate Program Recruitment Fair on May 18, 2012. Graduate students Marissa Corona, Meg Grounds, Bjorn Hubert-Wallander, J. Oliver Siy, and Kayla Upshaw volunteered at our table to speak with prospective applicants. We made several connections during the fair and appreciate our students who volunteered their time. Thanks!
Sungjun Joo, Lori Malahy, and Tom Soare each received GPSS Travel Grant support. Congratulations!
[Students who complete their Master’s degrees, general exams or defend their dissertation in Spring/Summer 2012 will be included in the Winter 2012 e-newsletter]