Awards and News

Please join us in congratulating Santiago Morales for receiving the 2024 ISDP Kucharski Young Investigator Award.

Santiago also received the Raubenheimer Award.  This award represent one of USC Dornsife’s highest faculty honors, and celebrate
achievement in research, teaching, and service to the university.

Please join us in congratulating Morteza Dehghani on becoming a Fellow with the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. This is a competitive process, and Morteza succeeded in earning a place among this selected group of social psychologists.

From the Society for Personality & Social Psychology: “On behalf of the 2024 SPSP Fellows Committee, it is my pleasure to announce your acceptance as a Fellow with the Society for Personality and Social Psychology! As a fellow with SPSP, you represent the very best personality and social psychology can offer in terms of leadership, research, pedagogy, outreach and advocacy for our field. Your application and dedication to the field is impressive and I am happy to welcome you on behalf of the Fellows Committee into SPSP’s Fellows Circle!”

Please join us in congratulating Norbert Schwarz on receiving the Association for Psychological Science Mentor Award. The APS honors members such as Dr. Schwarz for significantly fostering the careers of others, honoring those who masterfully help students and others find their own voices and discover their own research and career goals.

Please join us in congratulating Steven Lopez on receiving the Association for Psychological Science James S. Jackson Lifetime Achievement Award for Transformative Scholarship. The APS honors members such as Dr. Lopez for their lifetime of outstanding psychological research that advances understanding of historically disadvantaged racial and ethnic groups and/or understanding of the psychological and societal benefits of racial/ethnic diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Congratulations to Elisa Baek on receiving the NARSAD Young Investigator Grant Award from Brain and Behavior Foundation.

BBRF Young Investigator Grants provide each scientist with up to $35,000 per year for two years totaling $70,000 to enable promising investigators to either extend research fellowship training or begin careers as independent research faculty. The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation awarded the first Young Investigator Grant in 1987. The goal of the YI program is to help researchers launch careers in neuroscience and psychiatry and gather pilot data to apply for larger federal and university grants. Since 1987, we have awarded more than $326 million in Young Investigator Grants around the world.

Please join us in congratulating Jonathan Stange on receiving the SSCP Susan Nolen-Hoeksema Early Research Career Award. This award is a recognition of his contributions to the science of clinical psychology. This is a highly competitive award, and Jonathan’s earning of this award is well deserved.

Please join us in congratulating Anthony Vaccaro on receiving the Society of Affective Science (SAS) Best Dissertation Award for 2024. Anthony is currently a post doc in Darby Saxbe’s lab, but he did his graduate work in Jonas Kaplan’s lab. The SAS committee received numerous exceptional nominations for the Award, but they were unanimous in selecting Anthony for this Award.

Please join us in congratulating Jennifer Vo, our graduate Academic Program Administrator, on the recognition of her contributions to USC Dornsife with a Spot Award. She was awarded a Dornsife Spot Award! Jasmine Yu nominated her for the award, and here is some of what she wrote:

“Jennifer has been an extremely helpful and supportive colleague! She is an amazing graduate advisor to her Psychology Ph.D. students and she helps promote my Ph.D. Academy resources and events to her students. On top of that, Jennifer has also taken on supporting Anthropology’s Ph.D. students. We have seen an increased attendance and engagement at our events thanks to her encouragement. I consider her a superstar in her role, always going above and beyond to support her students.”

Jennifer truly deserves this Award!

Congratulations Jennifer!

Please join us in congratulating the students below on receiving the Excellence in Scientific Writing 2024 from the Department of Psychology. Each area chooses one student from any year who has excelled in writing (a paper for publication, a conference presentation/poster, 2^nd year project, dissertation, etc.), in the past year. Each student was awarded a $100 prize.

Developmental Psychology: Wani Qiu

Brain and Cognitive Science: Sarah Hennessy

Social Psychology: Kevin Choi

Clinical Science: Morgan Lynch

Quantitative Methods & Computational Psychology: Meltem Ozcan

Congratulations on this recognition!  Also, compliments to the brilliant posters from our 3^rd year students who presented at the Department Poster Party on Jan 24th!

Congratulations to Ellie Gottesman for receiving the Dornsife Scholar Award. She is a participant in the Psychology Honors program working with Henrike Moll. The Dornsife Scholar Program, grants a few graduating seniors with $10,000 to be put toward graduate school costs. The award emphasizes impactful research and positive human impact on a global scale. More information about the award can be found here: https://dornsife.usc.edu/dornsife-scholars-program/.

Congratulations to Laura Fenton for receiving the Gold Family Fellowship Award in the amount of $5,000. This is awarded to a limited number of PhD candidates for research related to their dissertation. Gold Family Fellows are chosen on the basis of extraordinary academic promise.

Congratulations to Ian Anderson for receiving the USC Dornsife’s 2023 Communicator of the Year Award. This award honors scholars who contribute significant time and effort to meaningfully improve the public’s understanding of issues, influence policy, and/or raise the level of public discourse around research and scholarship conducted at Dornsife.

Asaf Mazar won the best student led paper in 2022 SPSP Student Publication Award for his paper: The Unintentional Nonconformist: Habits Promote Resistance to Social influence.

Dr. Iony Ezawa on received the very prestigious Marna Barrett Award for Excellence in Psychotherapy at the Society for Psychotherapy Research Annual Meeting held in Dublin, Ireland in the summer of 2023.

Congratulations to Henny Moll on receiving the 2023 American Psychological Foundation (APF) Joseph B. Gittler Award. This award is to recognize psychologists who are making and will continue to make scholarly contributions to the philosophical foundations of psychological knowledge.

Please join us in congratulating Anthony Vaccaro on his new US News Opinion piece! He wrote a piece on mixed emotion originally for The Conversation, and they pitched it to US News and included it in their Opinion section!

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2024-09-20/why-do-we-feel-mixed-emotions-brain-science-has-an-answer

Duke Han and his lab recently received some media attention regarding their recent study.

Dornsife: https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/alzheimers-and-financial-scam-vulnerability-may-be-linked/

This study also received attention from multiple news outlets around the world, for example US News and World Report:

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2024-09-10/falling-for-financial-scams-could-be-early-alzheimers-sign

Please join us in congratulating our colleague Sneha Mathur on her publishing an op-ed article in USA Today, which first appeared in The Conversation published by USC Dornsife.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2024/09/07/tim-walz-son-gus-tears-dnc-neurodivergent/75054632007/

Congratulations to Dr. Duke Han for being featured in Forbes & AARP!  Please check out the following articles:

Forbes – Cognitive Tests:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2024/07/09/heres-what-a-cognitive-test-would-and-wouldnt-say-about-bidens-ability-to-serve-as-president/

AARP – How to Protect Older Adults from Scams:

https://www.aarp.org/money/scams-fraud/info-2024/protect-older-parents-from-scams.html

Duke Han will be participating in this webinar where he’ll be interviewed by Good Housekeeping, Prevention, and Women’s Day magazines:

https://www.afar.org/events/webinar-money-on-the-mind-cognition-and-financial-decisions

WHITE HOUSE PRESENTATION

Morteza Dehghani will be presenting his work on morally motivated hate at the White House at the end of May 2024.

“The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), along with the National Security Council (NSC) and the Domestic Policy Council (DPC), committed in the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism to launching an interagency effort to understand hate incidents and eliminate the impediments to recognizing, reporting, and preventing them. With support and leadership from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Justice, and the National Institutes of Health, this effort is intended to complement existing initiatives and investments aimed at improving our awareness of hate and bias-related incidents experienced by a diverse array of communities across the country with the goal of informing current and future evidence-based policies and programs.”

Congratulations to Morteza on the recognition of his research, and his being a part of this important initiative!

WHITE HOUSE REPORT FEATURE

Morteza Dehghani’s group whose work has been cited in the new roadmap for future research on Information Integrity, recently released by the White House. The link is below, and the cited paper is (Mooijman, M., Hoover, J., Lin, Y., Ji, H., & Dehghani, M. (2018). Moralization in social networks and the emergence of violence during protests. Nature Human Behaviour, 2(6), 389-396.)

Learn More: https://dornsife.usc.edu/psyc/wp-content/uploads/sites/81/2023/11/Roadmap-Information-Integrity-RD-2022.pdf

Congratulations to Anthony Vaccaro. He is Darby Saxbe’s post-doc, and a former graduate student in our Department who did his graduate studies at the BCI (Antonio Damasio and Jonas Kaplan were his mentors). Anthony published a really interesting Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times about social media use and the brain, which also makes some more general points about the use of neuroscience in the media. It is not easy to get published in LA Times! So big congratulation to Anthony on this great accomplishment!

Learn more: Opinion: Are social media and smartphones rewiring kids’ brains? – Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)

Drew Gorenz was interviewed on ABC Australia about a conference talk presenting his research into the humor of ChatGPT.  Learn More: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/sundayextra/how-funny-is-chatgpt-/103747152

Please join us in congratulating Joe Arvai on his lead story in The Conversation: What happens when AI decides for you.  It is a great and engaging article that addresses a very timely topic.

Check out Darby Saxbe’s Op-Eds out in the New York Times!

Opinion: Fatherhood Transforms Men’s Brains and Bodies – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/16/opinion/dad-brain-fatherhood-parenting.html

Teen Mental Health Treatment and the Iatrogenic Effects of Some Programs

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/opinion/teenagers-mental-health-treatment.html

Hanna and Antonio Damasio were featured in a Q&A in Neuron. They discuss the value of single case studies for neuroscience, consciousness research and the limits of AI, and the fascinating relationship between creativity and the brain.

Dr. Antonio Damasio and Dr. Norbert Schwarz were named by Research.com in the “Top 200 Best Scientists” in the field of Psychology, worldwide.

Dr. Daphna Oyserman has been elected to the German National Academy of Science, Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher — Leopoldina (founded in 1652, which makes it the oldest learned society in continuous operation).