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VUMC’s Casagrande elected AAAS fellow
Vanderbilt University professor Vivien Casagrande, Ph.D., has been elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.
Casagrande was honored by the association for her “distinguished contributions to our understanding of the cellular patterns and connections of the mammalian visual system, including its embryological and early postnatal development.”
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December 15, 2006 |
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Why We Never Forget a Face
Are you one of those people who never forgets a face?
New research from Vanderbilt University suggests that we can remember more faces than other objects and that faces “stick” the best in our short-term memory. The reason may be that our expertise in remembering faces allows us to package them better for memory.
“Our results show that we can store more faces than other objects in our visual short-term memory,” Gauthier, associate professor of psychology and the study’s co-author, said. “We believe this happens because of the special way in which faces are encoded.”
Full Story
December 12, 2006 |
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Southeastern College Art Conference
The Vanderbilt Vision Research Center and the Center for Integrative and Cognitive Neuroscience helped sponsor a session titled Madness and Creativity for the Mid America College Art Association at the Southeastern College Art Conference held at Vanderbilt University October 25th through October 28th.
December 4, 2006 |
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New 'network of networks' to study impact of time on learning
A multidisciplinary exploration of the impact of time and timing on how we learn is the focus of a new National Science Foundation-funded center partially based at Vanderbilt. The Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center was created with a five-year, $15.5 million Science of Learning Center grant from the NSF.
Isabel Gauthier and Thomas Palmeri, both associate professors of psychology at Vanderbilt, were part of a core team of eight scientists from Vanderbilt, the University of California-San Diego and Rutgers University that worked together to develop the winning proposal. The center, primarily housed at UCSD, will ultimately include more than 40 investigators from nearly a dozen universities in the United States, Canada and Australia.
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November 6, 2006 |
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Fingernails on a chalkboard garner Vanderbilt psychologist Ig Nobel Prize
Giving a closer listen to a sound most of us try to avoid – fingernails scraping on a chalkboard – has won Vanderbilt psychologist Randolph Blake an unusual and coveted award, the Ig Nobel Prize.
The prizes, awarded annually by the Society for Improbable Research since 1991, are given to research that “makes people laugh and then makes them think.” The society receives thousands of nominations each year for the awards, which are covered by press around the globe.
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October 11, 2006 |
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2006 Fine Science Tool Travel Award
Congratulations to Walter Jermakowicz and Jeremiah Cohen for being selected to receive the 2006 Fine Science Tool Travel Award. This award provides $500 towards the cost of attending the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Atlanta.
October 11, 2006 |
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Helmholtz Lecture
Randolph Blake, Centennial Professor of Psychology, delivered a Helmholtz lecture, Seeing Colors in the Mind's Eye: Studies of Color-Graphemic Synesthesia. This prestigious lecture is sponsored by the Helmholtz Intitute in Utrecht, the Netherlands. It honors the name of one of the most influential scientists of the 19th century who formulated the law of conservation of energy, measured the speed of conduction of nerve impulses and invented the ophthalmoscope.
September 20, 2006 |
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Appointments and Elections
Anne Corn, professor of special education, has been named to the Enrichment Committee for 2006-07 for the National Center for Leadership in Visual Impairment at Pennsylvania College of Optometry. As Vanderbilt’s primary representative to the NCLVI University Consortium, Corn serves as adviser to Vanderbilt students Heather McDonough and Tessa Wright, fellows in the NCLVI’s doctoral program in blindness and visual impairment education.
September 12, 2006 |
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Awards and Honors
Jon Kaas, Centennial Professor of Psychology, wrote “The Evolution of the Neocortex from Early Mammals to Modern Humans,” and René Marois, assistant professor of psychology, wrote “Capacity Limits of Information Processing in the Brain,” two of seven articles included in an issue of Phi Kappa Phi Forum that was recognized with a 2006 Magnum Opus Silver Award for best series of articles and a 2006 APEX Award of Excellence for Feature Series Writing.
September 12, 2006 |
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Jon Kaas Awarded the 2006 Karl Spencer Lashley Award
Jon Kaas has been selected as the winner of the 2006 Karl Spencer Lashley Award from the American Philosophical Society. The award recognizes pioneering work in the field of neurobiology. Previous recipients of this award include Roger Sperry, David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel, Eric Kandel, and Patricia Goldman-Rakic.
The Karl Spencer Lashley Award was established in 1957 by Dr. Lashley, a member of the Society and a distinguished neuroscientist and neuropsychologist. Lashley's entire scientific career was spent in the study of behavior and its neural basis. His famous experiments on the brain mechanisms of learning, memory and intelligence helped inaugurate the modern era of integrative neuroscience. The award is made in recognition of work on the integrative neuroscience of behavior.
Clearly, this award is reserved for only the most eminent scientists. Congratulations to Jon!
Vanderbilt Register
August 14, 2006 |
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Congratulations to Do-Joon Yi
Do-Joon Yi has received a faculty position at Yonsei University in South Korea. Along with Seoul National University, this is one of the two most prestigious jobs a person can receive in psychology in Korea. Do-Joon's formal training in neuroscience and neuroimaging while attending Vanderbilt helped him to receive this position. Do-Joon was a psychology graduate student at Vanderbilt in Marvin Chun's lab. Congratulations Do-Joon!
July 24, 2006 |
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Congratulations to Melanie Bernard and Jason Samonds
Melanie Bernard and Jason Samonds, both students in A.B. Bond's laboratory, won travel awards to attend the 2006 VSS meeting. The funds help cover expenses in attending the conference
May 11, 2006 |
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Vanderbilt psychologist elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2006 class includes former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton
Vanderbilt psychologist Randolph Blake has been named to a distinguished class of scientists, politicians, authors, artists and others, the American Academy of Arts and Science announced April 24.
The academy named 195 new fellows for 2006. In addition to Blake, the list includes former Presidents George H.W. Bush and William Jefferson Clinton; Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts; Nobel Prize-winning biochemist and Rockefeller University President Sir Paul Nurse; the chairman and vice chairman of the 9/11 commission,Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton; actor and director Martin Scorsese; choreographer Meredith Monk; conductor Michael Tilson Thomas; and New York Stock Exchange chairman Marshall Carter.
Full Story • Vanderbilt Register
April 25, 2006
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The New Comparative Biology of Human Nature
Jon Kaas, distinguished professor of psychology, has received approval and sponsorship from the National Academy of Sciences to host a special research colloquium, “The New Comparative Biology of Human Nature,” at the Beckman Center of the National Academies in Irvine, Calif., in November. The colloquium is part of the Sackler Colloquia Series, which comprises four to six two-day events each year on scientific topics of broad and current interests spanning multiple disciplines. Todd Preuss of Emory University, John M. Allman of the University of Chicago and Susan M. Fitzpatrick of the John S. McDonnell Foundation will co-organize the colloquium.
April 10, 2006 |
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Light-Guided Surface Engineering for Biological Screening Applications
Ashwath Jayagopal, a Vanderbilt Vision Research Center pre-doctoral trainee in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, gave an invited talk, "Light-Guided Surface Engineering for Biological Screening Applications," at the Institute of Biological Engineering's annual meeting in Tucson, Ariz. Jayagopal is advised by Frederick Haselton, associate professor of biomedical engineering, and V. Prasad Shastri, assistant professor of biomedical engineering. At the same conference, he received 2nd place in the poster competition and a cash award.
March 14, 2006 |
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ASSC William James Prize
Congratulations to Sang-Hun Lee. He has been selected to receive the 2006 ASSC William James Prize for Contributions to the Study of Consciousness. His contributions to the study of consciousness were viewed as exceptional by the Selection Committee. The Committee members believe that Sang-Hun's work on traveling waves of dominance during binocular rivalry is both unique and important. His work makes a major contribution to the study of consciousness. Sang-Hun will be presented with this award at the 2006 June meeting in Oxford, England.
March 2, 2006 |
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Retina Research Foundation Travel Grant
Congratulations to Brian Armstrong, a 4th year medical student working with Dr. David Calkins on the cellular basis of glaucoma. Brian has been awarded a Retina Research Foundation Travel Grant for his presentation at ARVO concerning retinal inflammation in response to ocular pressure.
March 1, 2006 |
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Troland Research Award
Marvin Chun has been awarded the Troland Research Award from the National Academy of Sciences. The research award given annually to two recipients recognizes unusual achievement and is to further their research within the broad spectrum of experimental psychology. Congratulations to Marvin Chun!
National Academy of Sciences Website
February 23, 2006 |
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Congratulations to Ash Jayagopal
Ash has been selected by the ARVO Program Committee to receive an ARVO Foundation/Retina Research Foundation Travel Grant. These fellowship funds are to provide partial travel support to attend the upcoming 2006 ARVO Annual Meeting. Ash has been selected from over 1100 applicants based upon his abstract. Congratulations!
February 22, 2006 |
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2006 Young Investigator Award
Congratulations to Frank Tong for being selected to receive the 2006 Young Investigator Award by the Cognitive Neuroscience Society.
January 18, 2006 |
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Top Psychology Article Downloads
Congratulations to Randolph Blake and Chai-Youn Kim. Their article Kim, C-.Y., & Blake, R. (2005). Psychophysical magic: Rendering the visible 'invisible.' Trends in Cognitive Science, 9, 381-388 is the17th out of 25 top downloaded psychology articles published by Elsevier for this month. Way to go!
January 12, 2006
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News Headlines 2005 |
