PBS Welcomes New Department Chair
We are pleased to announce that Professor Ilia Karatsoreos has been elected Department Chair. A PBS faculty member since 2020, Ilia is a circadian rhythm expert in our Behavioral Neuroscience research program.
Melinda Gonzales-Backen Joins PBS as Associate Chair of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
In this newly created position, she will work to grow the department’s strength in Diversity Science and providing leadership around building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community.
Student Spotlight: Nai Christophe
Meet Nai Christophe from Taunton, MA. Nai recently graduated with Psychology and Public Health dual degrees, earning both a BA and a BS, with a certificate in Criminology. She also served as the President of the Haitian American Student Association and in the last year was able to re-activate its charitable subsection.
Alumni Spotlights
Research Highlights
Challenges With Interpersonal Emotion Regulation and Its Connection to Disordered Eating
An individual who has emotion regulation difficulties may start using one or more of their social relationships to excessively seek support, reassurance, or to vent; leading to short-term positive intrinsic emotional consequences.
Mohammad Atari has a new Perspective Paper being release soon in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), co-authored by Michael Varnum, Nicolas Baumard, and Kurt Gray. The authors make the case for the development of "historical Large Language Models" in order to simulate people who lived in the far past. This will enable psychologists and other social scientists to run "experiments" on the dead, the assumption being that cognitive artifacts of the dead can be learned by LLMs based on historical texts (e.g., books, newspapers, biographies, etc.).
Award Highlights
Tammy Rahhal Awarded 2024-25 Chancellor’s Leadership Fellowship
The Chancellor’s Leadership Fellowship program seeks to cultivate future campus leaders by offering a half-time, one-year appointment and providing mentoring from the leader of the host unit. In addition, fellows launch a significant program during their fellowship year.
Lori Astheimer Best and Ashley Woodman have been promoted to Senior Lecturer II.
Truc Do was selected as a scholar for the Towards 2044: Horowitz Early Career Scholar Program.
Carolyn Davies received an Open Education Initiative grant to adopt Open Educational Resources.
Hannah Cournoyer was awarded a one-year Institute for Applied Life Sciences (IALS) translational graduate student assistantship.
PBS Remembers
Professor Emeritus James Averill Passes Away at Age 88
James was a professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences (PBS) at UMass Amherst for over 30 years, retiring in 2006.