Early Career Award

USC Dornsife’s Mary Helen Immordino-Yang has been awarded the Early Career Award for 2014 by the American Educational Research Association (AERA). The international organization will confer the award for excellence in education research at its annual meeting in Philadelphia on April 5.

Established to honor an individual in the early stages of his or her career no later than 10 years after receipt of a doctoral degree, the Early Career Award can be granted for study in any field of educational inquiry. Immordino-Yang shares the award with Sara Goldrick-Rab of the University of Wisconsin.

“We are proud to honor the outstanding commitment and accomplishments of this year’s award winners,” said AERA Executive Director Felice Levine. “Through their scholarship and service to the field, they stand as exemplars to AERA’s 25,000 members and to all who are committed to the study and practice of education in the United States and elsewhere.”

The accolade comes on the heels of Immordino-Yang’s selection as a recipient of the 2013 Early Career Award for Public Engagement With Science and Technology bestowed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

An assistant professor of psychology at the USC Brain and Creativity Institute based at USC Dornsife, Immordino-Yang is an affective neuroscientist and human development psychologist who studies the neural, psychophysiological and psychological bases of social emotion, self-awareness and culture, and their implications for development. She is also an assistant professor at the USC Rossier School of Education.

Immordino-Yang is among an elite list of American scholars named by education policy maven Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute in his 2014 Edu-Scholar rankings of those whose work has most influenced the national discourse on education.