Graduate Student Recognition

AWARDS & FELLOWSHIPS

Barbara Sarason Endowed Fellowship in Psychology -- Danielle Whiley

Earl Hunt Graduate Fellowship Fuynd -- Cher Yang and Thea Weiss

Alcor Endowed Scholarship Fund -- Samreen Boparai, Gabby Gauthier and Sarah Gobrial

Jeffrey Jaeger Fellowship in Clinical Psychology -- Victoria Szydlowski 

Megan Schultz won a 2022 American Psychological Foundation (APF)/COGDOP Graduate Research Scholarship: William C. Howell Scholarship. The Council of Graduate Departments of Psychology awards over 20 scholarships a year to support graduate students in psychology with research costs associated with the master's thesis and doctoral dissertations. For more information: https://www.apa.org/apf/funding/cogdop?tab=1 Megan is a 3rd year Child Clinical Psychology Ph.D. student who is mentored by Professor Kevin King.

Daina Tagavi, a postdoctoral scholar working with Wendy Stone, received a 2-year grant award from the Organization for Autism Research. The award title: Development of A Behavioral Intervention Program for Families of Autistic Adults. The study aims to develop a protocol that would offer autistic adults and their families a tool to promote adaptive skill development and decrease behaviors that may interfere with autistic individuals engaging in desired skills of independence in the home and community.

Shana Attar received an Academic Community Partnership grant award from UW ITHS. Her mentor is Wendy Stone. Project Title: Co-Developing and Piloting Culturally-Responsive Informational Materials about Autism for Families of Young Children: Employing a Train-the-Trainer Implementation Model within a Nonprofit Setting. In partnership with Mother Africa, a local non-profit organization, the research team will co-design culturally-responsive caregiver-focused educational materials to support culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) families with children who have social communication delays or Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and will develop a novel route for dissemination of information and materials within non-profit organizations, which are often the preferred entry-point for accessing healthcare information and services for underserved populations.

Abdullahi Jaranow, student in the Master of Arts in Applied Child and Adolescent Psychology program, received a Communities of Opportunity Place-Based and Cultural Communities Partnership grant from Best Start for Kids ($855,000 over 3 years).  Starting from a project first conceived in a class taught by Lynn Fainsilber Katz and Dannielle Whiley, Abdullahi and partners in the Cham, Somali and Oromo immigrant and refugee communities designed a community based intervention that addresses mental health disparities through community engagement, culturally appropriate mental health support, and engaging youth to address the root causes of disparities.

Kirstyn Smith-LeCavalier received a 31-month, $129,876 NRSA Training grant from the NIH National Institute on Drug Abuse. Her mentor is Mary Larimer. Award title: Measurement and Modeling of Within-Person Variability in Cannabis Protective Behavioral Strategies: A Novel Approach Using Scale Development, Daily Data, and Machine Learning Methods. The study aims to provide methods that can help individuals reduce cannabis use and/or the harms associated with cannabis use. It seeks to use a novel approach including scale development, EMA (ecological momentary assessment) / daily data, and machine learning methods.

William George and graduate student, Lauren Smith, received a $19,688 award from UW ADAI (Addictions, Drug & Alcohol Institute) for 2023. Award title: A Field Study Examining the Effects of Alcohol, Bar Environment and Beliefs on Sexual Misperception, a Precursor to Sexual Aggression. This project investigates the interacting effects of alcohol and Confluence Model constructs on sexual misperception through an alcohol myopia framework.

Shana Attar, a graduate student working with Wendy Stone, recently received a NRSA grant award from NIMH. The award title is: Developing a Framework to Advance Cultural Sensitivity and Accommodate Behavioral Variability in Toddler Autism Screening: A Mixed-Methods Cross-Cultural Approach to Improve Autism Screening Accuracy. Her project is designed to characterize culture-specific early symptomatic expressions of autism and use this information to increase family and provider knowledge and practices regarding early autism detection. Her ultimate objective is to advance  timely and equitable early autism detection in racial and ethnic minority settings.

Rachel Song, a graduate student who works with Cynthia Levine, was awarded a Population Health Applied Research Fellowship for the summer to work on a project assessing migration and displacement in King County. For more information about the fellowship, visit the Population Health website.  

Katie Malloy Spink, a graduate student who works with Kate Foster, was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to support her research applying a person-centered approach to study emotion-regulation in adolescence.

Graduate student Holly Hake, who is mentored by Andrea Stocco, won the Applied Modeling award at the Cognitive Science conference. Her paper was selected out of 2,000 submissions, and it shows how to use computational models to precisely detect memory impairments, with an 8-min test instead of 3-hours of clinical assessments.

Megan Schultz, a graduate student working with Kevin King, recently received a three-year, $143,082 NRSA Training grant from the NIH National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The award is for her work titled How the Short-term Influence of Drinking Consequences Shapes the Development of Expectancies: An Event-level Study. The study will use a complex ecological momentary assessment design to assess consequence and expectancy evaluations over time to examine changes in people’s perceptions based on their experiences. Results can inform individuals on a daily level of when they may be more susceptible to negative consequences from drinking and prompt increased reflection of plans.
 
Chu-Hsuan (Iris) Kuo, a graduate student mentored by Chantel Prat, just won the Jason Albrecht Outstanding Young Scientist Award from the Society for Text and Discourse. The award is given to one student each year based on their dissertation research.

Chelsea Mackey, a graduate student working with Mary Larimer, received a three-year, $143,082 NRSA Training grant from the NIH National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The award is for her work titled Hitting Close to Home: A Multi-Method Investigation of Neighborhood Characteristics and Drinking Motives on Alcohol-Related Health Disparities. The study seeks to use both qualitative and quantitative approaches to identify neighborhood- and community-level factors that may influence alcohol outcomes among Black adults.

PUBLICATIONS

Melissa Gasser, Carly Gray, and Katherine Seldin's recently published article, "Youth-Focused Design and Regulation in eHealth Can Help Address the Mental Healthcare Crisis" was selected as the "Outstanding Article Competition Winner" by The Lancet and Financial Times Commission on Governing Health Futures 2030 in the Journal of Science Policy and Governance's special issue on youth and digital health. Their mentors are Bill George, Peter Kahn, and Kevin King. Theior article can be accessed here. 

Loranzie Rogers and co-authors Allison B. Coffin (WSU Vancouver) and Joseph Sisneros (UW Psychology) had their article "Reproductive state modulates utricular auditory sensitivity in vocal fish" in the Journal of Neurophysiology. 

Liying Wang and Jane Simoni from UW Psychology, alongside colleagues from Northwestern University, UCLA and Fudan University, had their article "Depression as a mediator between intimate partner violence (IPV) and CD4 cell count among men who have sex with men (MSM) living with HIV in China" published in the journal AIDSCare. The article can be accessed here: Depression as a mediator between intimate partner violence (IPV) and CD4 cell count among men who have sex with men (MSM) living with HIV in China

MASTERS DEGREES AWARDED

Spring 2023 

Carly Gray 

Lindsey Green 

Sukran Bahar Sener 

Kirstyn Smith-LeCavalier 

Laila Volpe 

Dannielle Whiley 

PHDS AWARDED

Terrènce Pope (Social Psychology and Personality; Chair: Sapna Cheryan) 

How Racial and Ethnic Stereotypes Lead to Context-Dependent Patterns of Hiring Discrimination 

Doris Dai (Social Psychology and Personality; Chair: Stephanie Fryberg) 

The ever-changing face of social groups: Psychological and behavioral responses to group-image threat 

Dominic Sivitilli (Behavioral Neuroscience; Chair: David Gire) 

Reverse Engineering the Octopus Arm