Michael Constantino and Team Receive NIH Grant for Web-based Mental Healthcare App
The team’s application, Express Access, conveniently connects mental healthcare patients with therapists who are best matched for them.
It’s Not Just on ‘The Pitt’: Real-Life Emergency Doctors are Stressed Out—And Patient Irritation Plays a Significant Role
UMass Amherst-led research finds physicians with peevish patients were more likely to become disengaged in the patients’ care.
Education Embodied: Measuring Student Engagement Through Physiology
Universities are investing heavily in more inclusive teaching—but which classroom practices actually help students feel engaged and supported? The Institute of Diversity Sciences has awarded an interdisciplinary research grant to Lisa Sanders and Yimeng Wang (Psychological and Brain Sciences) alongside VP Nguyen and Sidharth Anupkrishnan (CICS) to explore this question.
New Book by Christopher Martell 'Living Well with Depression: Practical Strategies for Improving Your Daily Life' Now Available
A new book offering practical daily strategies and unique insights for people living with depression has been released by renowned psychologist Christopher R. Martell, PhD, ABPP.
New Faces
Awards and Honors
Graduate Students / Postdocs
The paper "Acculturative Stress and Risky Behaviors in Rural Latinx Youth: The Moderating Role of Parental Monitoring” by Deziah Bermudez et al. was selected as an Editor’s Choice by the Journal of Child and Family Studies. Read more
Chiung-Yu (Lisa) Chang awarded Taiwanese Overseas Pioneers Grant. Read more
NIMH F31 awarded to Dominic Denning for his project to address predicting risk in socially marginalized college students. Read more
Averi Gaines was awarded a Psychotherapy Research Grant from the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy and the Dissertation Award from the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy (SEPI).
Ali Hajian has won the SPSP Jenessa Shapiro Graduate Research Award. Read more
Roya Mohammadsadegh selected for Society for Neuroscience’s 2026 Trainee Professional Development Award. Read more
Victoria Vizzini awarded CNS Equity Fellowship for Spring 2027.
Faculty
Mohammad Atari has been named a Fellow of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology.
Daniel Coppersmith is the winner of the 2026 Early Career Award of the Society for Ambulatory Assessment. Read more
Linda Isbell has been appointed an Adjunct Professor of Emergency Medicine at UMass Chan Medical School.
In the Media
Scientists Tested AI’s Moral Compass, and the Results Reveal a Key Blind Spot
A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Aliah Zewail and Mohammad Atari suggests that large language models struggle to accurately estimate the moral values of people outside of Western societies. Scientists found that these artificial intelligence systems tend to overestimate the moral concerns of Western nations while underestimating the values of non-Western cultures. This pattern provides evidence that relying on these models to gauge global public opinion could unintentionally reinforce cultural stereotypes.
Irregular Sleep Risks Preschool Kids' Brain Power
Irregular sleep is linked to lower brain power among preschool kids, a new study says. Children who don’t stick to a regular sleep schedule tend to have problems with vocabulary and memory. The findings were published recently in the journal Sleep. “Children with more irregular sleep patterns tended to perform worse on verbal and memory tasks, even after accounting for total sleep time,” said lead researcher Karolina Rusin.
Making Eye Contact and Small Talk With Strangers Is More Than Just Being Polite
Linda Tropp, professor of social psychology at UMass Amherst, authored this article about increasing social connection by engaging in psychological generosity with strangers. Instead of being merely transactional while navigating interactions with other people, we can learn how to be more relational.
Mindful Moments
Mohammad Atari has been awarded a grant from the John Templeton Foundation to study the history of religious innovation in the golden age of Islam. Read more
Earlier this summer, the Center for Research on Families (CRF) partnered with the Women’s Fund of Western Massachusetts to host the annual Women’s Fund Policy Roundtable at the UMass Center at Springfield, bringing together community partners for meaningful conversations about strategies for policy change and a more equitable future. More updates from CRF
Presentations
Mohammad Atari recently delivered a talk titled “Is Empathic AI Possible?” at the Kabiller Science of Empathy Conference: AI & Empathy, hosted at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. The presentation shares its title with a forthcoming book chapter co-authored with his graduate students, Aliah Zewail and Firat Seker, set to be published by Cambridge University Press in the volume Empathy and Artificial Intelligence. In his talk, Dr. Atari examined whether computational systems can genuinely embody and/or mirror human empathy, evaluating the psychological implications of machine-mediated emotional connection. For those interested in watching the full presentation, a video recording will soon be available on YouTube.
Erik Cheries was the invited faculty speaker for this year's Commonwealth Honors College Induction Ceremony. Every fall, first-year honors students are invited to attend this ceremony, welcoming them to the college. Other speakers included Chancellor Javier Reyes and student speaker Leila Metres.
Also, this past summer Erik Cheries was invited to Prague to teach the course "From Babies to Beasts: The Developmental Origins of the Criminal Mind" as part of International Teaching Week at the University of New York Prague.
Linda Isbell gave an invited talk entitled “Emotional Influences on Diagnostic Error in Emergency Medicine” to the Diagnostic Safety Community of Learning at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in Rockville, Maryland this past April.
Fırat Şeker presented his empirical cross-cultural work on metamorality, a new framework for understanding moral conflict resolution, at the International Society for Moral Psychology Conference in Ithaca, New York.
On July 6 members of the Rudd Adoption Research Program attended the ninth International Conference on Adoption Research held in Porto, Portugal. Rudd director Beth Neil presented a keynote address titled "Birth Family Connections into Adulthood: Future Directions and Lessons for Policy and Practice." She also led a session on openness in adoption at the post conference meeting for Portuguese adoption professionals and adoptive parents. Clinical graduate students Erica Ferrara, Jaylynn Floyd and Ana Berman and post-bac researcher Conor Johnson all presented posters. Associate Professor Jen McDermott took part in a symposium about trauma and mental health in adoption. For the first time the conference included a meeting for an adoptee scholar special interest group, sponsored by the Rudd Program.
Alumni News
Alice Coyne '21PhD was honored with SEPI’s New Researcher Award and American University’s College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Award for Exceptional Impact.
Liora Morhayim Duenyas '26PhD successfully defended her dissertation in June and started a postdoctoral researcher position at Stockholm University. She will be working with Dr. Sabina Cehajic-Clancy's research group for the project funded by the European Research Council Consolidator Grant. The project examines the role of social context on the effectiveness of interventions aimed to improve intergroup relations and involves studies in different countries such as Bosnia, Ukraine, Cyprus, Azerbaijan, Sweden that differ in their history of conflict, level of segregation, intergroup norms and majority-minority group dynamics.
Elle Waite '25PhD received the Young Investigator Award from the North American Society for the Study of Personality Disorders.
Delaney Racine '26 (Psychology) is a first-year graduate student in a PsyD program at Midwestern University, Chicago.
Clement Carson '25 (Psychology; Neuroscience Concentration) just started his first year of an MD program at the College of Medicine, SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University.
Laura Dunderdale '23 (Biology; Minor in Psychology) is a first-year graduate student in a Clinical Psychology PhD program at the University of Arizona.
David Celluci '21 (Psychology; Neuroscience Concentration) graduated from Tufts University School of Medicine this past spring (2026) and is now a resident physician in emergency medicine at Boston Medical Center.
Janvi Nanavati '20 (Biology) graduated from UMass Chan School of Medicine in May, 2026 and is now a resident physician in internal medicine at Loyola University Medical Center, Chicago.
Van Le '24 (Psychology) is a graduate student in the College of Education at the University of Washington, Seattle and just started her internship as a school psychologist in a rural school in Spokane, Washington.