Recent News
- 10 Undergraduates Inducted into Phi Beta Kappa
- Departmental Statement on Silent Sam
- Dr. Ken Bollen Receives Honorary Doctorate from Uppsala University
- 5 Honors Students Receive 2018 David Bray Peele Awards
- Christina Lebonville Selected for a UNC Transportation Grant
- APA Releases Statement on Reporting of Sexual Assault
- Michel Companion Receives King Research Excellence Award
- Jackie Paniccia Receives King Research Excellence Award
- Douglas Hermes Receives King Research Excellence Award
- Mian-Li Ong Awarded APA Citizen Psychologist Presidential Citation
- Rachel Haake Receives King Research Excellence Award
- Margarett McBride Awarded Black and Hooded Scholarship
- Dr. Keith Payne, Heidi Vuletich, & Kristjen Lundberg Receive Best Social Cognition Paper Award
Featured Alumni
Meghan Jones, Ph.D ’17, is a graduate of the Behavioral Integrative and Neuroscience Program and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at The Scripps Research Institute. In her current role, she conducts research to understand the neurobiological mechanisms driving susceptibility and resilence to trauma. Meghan believes her faculty mentors were critical in aiding her success at Carolina. She shares, “The faculty were extremely supportive of graduate students. Department-wide seminars provided a great environment to ask questions and to receive feedback on your work from all faculty, not just your advisor.” Read more about her graduate training and how UNC prepared her for her new role at Scripps.
Elise Rice, Ph.D ’16, is a graduate of the Social Psychology program. She now works at the National Cancer Institute as a postdoctoral fellow. Faculty in the Social Program assisted Elise in seeking career opportunities. Elise shares, “I learned about the possibility of a postdoctoral position at NCI through two faculty mentors, who separately encouraged me to contact an affective scientist they knew there.” She enjoyed her graduate training studying basic psychological processes, but was craving more application and direct impact. She says, “The postdoctoral position became an opportunity to collaborate with health behavior experts from different disciplines and perspectives.” Read more about her work and why she chose to pursue a Ph.D. at Carolina.
Featured Research
Dr. Joseph Hopfinger: Transcranial Neurostimulation Enhances Attention
Attention allows us to focus on and respond to the most important aspects of our environment. Transient lapses of attention lead to inefficient learning, distracted driving, and neglect of ongoing needs – and the involuntary capture of attention to stimuli that trigger cravings relates to the difficulties in overcoming addiction. In his work, Dr. Hopfinger is using transcranial neurostimulation not only to target the brain region of interest, but to stimulate at frequencies involved with the specific function of attention.
Dr. Daniel Bauer: A NIDA Project with a Novel Approach to Methodological Validation
Our scientific community has grown increasingly interested in how to integrate information across data sources to promote cumulative research. Combining data resources offers many advantages, including the ability to examine the consistency of findings across multiple studies and to investigate new research questions. Dr. Daniel Bauer and colleagues are creating new methodological approaches for integrative data analysis and, in a NIDA-funded project, are evaluating the validity of psychometric approaches to measurement harmonization.