News

Psychology faculty members receive College of Science Outstanding Mentor of the Year award

Dr. Pearl Chiu and Dr. Brooks King-Casas have received the Virginia Tech Graduate School 2021-2022 College of Science Outstanding Mentor of the Year Award. This award recognizes faculty members who mentor graduate students for their role in supporting, encouraging, and promoting a positive and inclusive scholarly and teaching environment, and for contributing to professional and personal development of graduate students

A Community-Based Approach to Developing a Brief Couples Intervention for Co-occurring Alcohol Use Disorder and Intimate Partner Violence

Dr. Meagan Brem's proposal, “A Community-Based Approach to Developing a Brief Couples Intervention for Co-occurring Alcohol Use Disorder and Intimate Partner Violence,” was selected for funding by Virginia Tech's Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention. The grant is called the Pathways to Peace Project Grant, see below more details about this proposal.

Dr. Lee Cooper and his team receive funding from the iTHRIVE Pilot Translational and Clinical Studies (PTC) Program

Congratulations to Dr. Lee Cooper and his graduate student team (Alyssa Gatto, Hayoung Ko, and Sydney Jones) for receiving approval for funding ($50,000) from the integrated Translational Health Research Institute of Virginia (iTHRIVE) Pilot Translational and Clinical Studies (PTC) Program.

The proposal entitled “A Comparison of the Effectiveness of Telepsychiatry with a Randomized Waitlist Control Utilizing Patient

Fear of Bees (Melissophobia): Symptoms, Treatments, & How to Cope

Choosing Therapy just recently published an article on Melissophobia that contains unbiased information regarding what the fear of bees actually is, and what it might look like and includes exclusive insights of expert Dr. Thomas Ollendick.

The fear of bees, also known as melissophobia or apiphobia, is a severe and intense terror brought on by not only bees themselves but images of them and even the mere thought of

Jennifer Bertollo has been selected to receive the American Psychological Foundation's COGDOP Graduate Student Research Scholarship

Congratulations to the VT Autism Clinic & Center for Autism Research's PANDA lab graduate student clinician, Jennifer Bertollo! Jennifer has been selected to receive the American Psychological Foundation's COGDOP Graduate Student Research Scholarship. This will help to fund her dissertation project on validating a remote, caregiver-facilitated autism observation measure and to create corresponding training materials for

CENI Playdate — Girls Launch! A Pandemic Response to Providing Female Scientist Role Models to Children

Can you describe your work to a 5-year-old? These 10 amazing women can! And they did, on video, so that the Girls Launch! project, which provides female scientist role models for kindergarten children, could continue during the pandemic. Girls Launch! is a joint outreach and research program between Psychology's Vanessa Diaz (iLEAP Lab), and Carrie Kroehler the Center for Communicating Science at Virginia Tech. Presentati

Emily Rost was selected for Proctor & Gamble's I/O Business Challenge

Congratulations to Emily Rost, she was one of six I/O PhD students in the country selected for Proctor & Gamble's I/O Business Challenge taking place in September.

The purpose is to solve a business challenge at P&G, which will then be implemented by the company.

The project could involve any issue that P&G’s I/O group faces, such as:

  • Employee Selection, Testing/Assessments
  • Workforce/People Analytics & Operations

Dr. Kurt Hoffman was named College of Science Outstanding Academic Faculty Advisor 2020-2021

We are thrilled to announce that Dr. Kurt Hoffman was selected as the inaugural winner for the 2020-2021 Outstanding Academic Advisor Award (Faculty Advisor) in the College of Science!

Dr. Hoffman’s excellence in advising is most deserving of recognition. His reputation within the department, the college, the university, and the professional community is simply outstanding, a reflection of his professionalism, deep

Scientists tie improved learning processes to reduced symptoms of depression

Virginia Tech Department of Psychology faculty, Pearl Chiu and Brooks King-Casas have identified neural learning processes to be associated with symptoms of depression and linked improvements in these processes to improved symptoms in research participants being treated for depression.

The findings, described in a study published July 28 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Psychiatry, suggest

Robin Panneton was selected as an Association for Psychological Science Fellow

Dr. Robin Panneton was selected as an APS Fellow (Association for Psychological Science). APS is the premier international society encompassing all subfields of Psychology.  Being elected Fellow of APS is a major career highlight. 

Congratulating Robin!

Written by Dr. Roseanne J. Foti