Over Five Million Dollars in Federal Stimulus Funds Awarded to Department of Psychology Faculty

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 was a federal stimulus plan intended to create jobs and promote investment and consumer spending during the recession. One component of the plan was to infuse the government’s two largest research funding agencies – that National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) – with funds to empower the nation’s best scientists to discover new cures, advance technology, and solve some of our greatest health and scientific challenges. ARRA provided the NIH with upwards of $10 billion dollars and the NSF $3 billion dollars. The goal was to stimulate hiring of new scientists, enhance scientific infrastructure, and jump-start new research programs that would support future economic growth. One of the challenges faced by both the NIH and NSF was the stipulation that the ARRA funds had to be spent rapidly, within two years. This not only presented difficulties for the agencies in administering the funds but challenges to researchers who typically take a longer-view to the needs of their research programs.

The Psychology Department has a long history of successfully competing for government sponsored research funds, often ranking first nationally among psychology departments in NIH sponsored research support. In keeping with this tradition, our department was very successful in attracting ARRA funds with eight of our faculty having ARRA-related grants totally over $5 million dollars. The topics of the grants reflect the research diversity of our department and include faculty studying cognitive, clinical, child clinical and developmental psychology. Specific recipients include:

Name	Title	Agency	Amount
Scott Murray	Neural Mechanisms of Object Size Perception	NSF	$850,000
Marsha Linehan	Curriculum for Training DBT Clinician-Scientists	NIH	$80,000
Peter Kahn	Social and Moral Relationships with Personified Robots	NSF	$1,200,000
Robert McMahon	Multisite Prevention of Adolescent Conduct Problems	NIH	$195,000
Alan Marlatt	Mindfulness Based Relapse Prevention: Efficacy and Mechanisms	NIH	$1,400,000
Kevin King	Emergence of Adolsescent Substance Use Problems from the Externalizing Spectrum	NIH	$855,000
Liliana Lengua	Low Income, Family Disruption, and the Development of Effortful Control	NIH	$450,000
Jessica Sommerville	The Neural Basis of Early Action Perception	NIH	$95,000