Department Highlights
Fei Xu has been awarded the 2024 Mary Ainsworth Award from Division 7 of the American Psychological Association. The award recognizes mid-career developmentalists who have made outstanding contributions to developmental science.
Dr. Laurel Sarfan has been awarded the 2024 ABCT President's New Researcher Award from the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies. Laurel is an assistant professional researcher in Dr. Allison Harvey's Golden Bear Sleep and Mood Research Clinic in the Psychology Department at UC Berkeley.
Jan has been awarded the 2024 Early Career Award in Developmental Science by the Jean Piaget Society. Congratulations on winning this very prestigious and well-deserved award!
UC Berkeley Department of Psychology Student Services Director Harumi Quinones has been selected for the Social Sciences Distinguished Service Award for 2024.
The 2024 Society for Affective Science Mentorship Award is bestowed to Dr. Iris Mauss, Professor of Psychology and director of the Institute for Social and Personality Research (IPSR) at the University of California, Berkeley.
Emily Rosenthal, a Clinical Science PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley, received a 2024 Scholar Award given by the International Chapter of the P.E.O. Sisterhood.
UC Berkeley Department of Psychology Student Services Director Harumi Quinones has been selected as a recipient of the 2024 Chancellor's Outstanding Staff Awards.
Bob Knight will receive the 2024 Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions from the American Psychological Association (APA).
Distinguished Faculty Lecture: "Moments in time: Brief biobehavioral building blocks for health and social bonding"
Presented by the UC Berkeley Department of Psychology on Wednesday, October 11, 2023.
Speaker: Robert W. Levenson Ph.D, Professor of Psychology...
How do humans pass on complex concepts and knowledge to subsequent generations? In his research, UC Berkeley cognitive scientist Bill Thompson uses computational methods and large-scale experiments to understand problems like knowledge transmission, the universality of language categories, and...
UC Berkeley psychologist Alison Gopnik has won the coveted Rumelhart Prize in Cognitive Science. She’ll receive the prize in 2024.
Please join me in congratulating Bob Knight who has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
With sadness, we want to let you know that our cherished colleague, Professor Emerita Mary Main, passed away peacefully at her home on January 6, 2023, just short of her 80th birthday, after a courageous battle with a long illness.
Fellow status is awarded to APS members who have made sustained outstanding contributions to the science of psychology in the areas of research, teaching, service, and/or application. Fellow status is typically awarded for one’s scientific contributions, but may also be awarded for exceptional...
Eleven UC Berkeley faculty members have been elected lifetime fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science.
The new members, among 508 total 2022 AAAS fellows, bring...
The APS Mentor Award recognizes psychology researchers and educators who have shaped the future directions of science by fostering the careers of students and colleagues.
Through the NOMIS & Science Young Explorer Award, the editors of Science and NOMIS wish to recognize bold young researchers who ask fundamental questions at the intersection of the life and social sciences; scientists who have performed interdisciplinary work with an enthusiasm that has...
The Fred Kavli Distinguished Career Contributions Award (DCC) was established in 2012 and it is sponsored by the Fred Kavli Foundation from 2019-2023. This award honors senior cognitive neuroscientists for their sustained and distinguished career, including outstanding scientific contributions,...
To express our appreciation for the amazing staff in our department, we gathered for an outdoor lunch on Friday, October 28, 2022 that was topped off with sugary and pillowy beignets!
This award recognizes outstanding achievements by early career PhD scholars (between 0 and 3 years Post-PhD) in social and personality psychology, including contributions to teaching, research, or service to the field.
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First given in 2007, the Carol and Ed Diener Award in Personality Psychology is designed to recognize a mid-career scholar (approximately 15-25 years from their first tenure-track appointment) whose work has added substantially to the body of knowledge to the personality field and/or brings...
Started in 2008, the Robert B. Cialdini Prize recognizes the author(s) of a publication that uses field methods and demonstrates relevance to outside groups. It is designed to recognize the publication that best explicates social psychological phenomena principally through the use of field...
Robert Knight, a UC Berkeley professor of psychology and member of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute (HWNI), and his wife Donatella Scabini have Robert Knight and Donatella Scabini announced that they will bequeath half a million dollars to the Berkeley Psychology Department and HWNI to support graduate students.
The Society of Hellman Fellows is an endowed program at all ten University of California campuses that provides research funding to promising assistant professors who show capacity for great distinction in their chosen fields. The program began in 1995 at UC Berkeley and UC San Diego and has...
The Teaching Effectiveness Award for GSIs honors a small number of GSIs who devise solutions to teaching or learning problems they have identified in their classes and write them up in a one-page essay.
As many know the Academy is both an honorary society that recognizes and celebrates the excellence of its members and an independent research center convening leaders from across disciplines, professions, and perspectives to address significant challenges.
It was founded in 1780...
In celebration of Earth Day, on Friday, April 22, 2022 a group of Psychology Department members came together for a beach clean-up and happy hour gathering.
The 2022 Class of Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows is made up of 30 outstanding immigrants and children of immigrants from all over the country and world who are pursuing graduate school here in the United States. Selected from more than 1,800 applicants, each of the recipients was chosen for their potential to make significant contributions to the United States and will receive up to $90,000 in funding over two years.
In episode 136 of Berkeley Talks, UC Berkeley psychology professor Jack Gallant discusses functional brain mapping for understanding health, aging and disease.
The FOUNDATIONS FOR CHANGE: Thomas I. Yamashita Prize is awarded annually to an outstanding emerging social change activist/scholar in California. The award was established in honor of Thomas I. Yamashita.
The APS Janet Taylor Spence Award recognizes APS members who have made transformative early career contributions to psychological science.
The Early Investigator Award is given to individuals who early in their careers have already made significant contributions to experimental psychology.
Dr. Nancy Liu has received a 2021 Walfish Award from the American Psychological Foundation for her primary role on "A framework for culturally humble therapeutic responses using the deliberate practice multicultural orientation video prompts."
Graduate student Erika Roach has received the 2021 Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology (SSCP). Outstanding Student Teacher Award.
Kring is recognized for distinguished contributions to the field of psychology and affective science, particularly for improving the understanding of anhedonia or distortions of affect in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
The first Asian American chair of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, Serena Chen mentors through her amazing work in several domains as well as her collaborations with her students and colleagues, including junior faculty members.
"The dynamic duo of Christine and Jennifer has saved the Psychology department thousands of dollars over the next years through their innovative rethinking of the major admission process. While the department stands to save money for no longer licensing database software, our students gain much...
Developing devices to enable blind and visually impaired people to access everyday technologies and digital information.
Insider’s most prestigious list profiles 100 business leaders across 10 distinct sectors who are innovating, sparking trends, and tackling global challenges.
With grief and sadness, we share the news that our friend and colleague, Lynn Robertson, passed away on Monday, October 4, 2021.
He is being recognized for a multitude of contributions, including his role in the development of the Emeriti Academy, his efforts in developing the Couples Project, contributions to Berkeley’s pre-retirement planning program, and extensive work on the Legacy Project.
AROHE,...
Three decades ago, child development researchers found that low-income children heard tens of millions of fewer words in their homes than their more affluent peers by the time they reached kindergarten. This “word gap” was and continues to be linked to a socioeconomic disparity in academic achievement.
October 3, 2020 marked the 150th anniversary of the University of California Regents’ unanimous approval of a resolution in 1870 by Regent Samuel F. Butterworth: “That young ladies be admitted into the University on equal terms in all respects with young men.” The first women were admitted as students to Berkeley in 1872, four years after the university’s opening in 1868. In celebration of 150 Years of Women at Berkeley, a website was created to showcase essays, interviews, and talks from across the campus, demonstrating the breadth and depth of women’s contributions to Berkeley, their fields, and to the larger world. These materials will be housed in the UC Berkeley Library’s Digital Collections.
Edward A. Dickson served as a Regent of the University of California from 1913 to 1946, the longest tenure of any Regent. In 1955, Mr. Dickson presented the University with a gift endowment which enables each campus to make an annual $10,000 award recognizing teaching, research, or public...
Cindy Ji interviews Chair Serena Chen about her life journey into Psychology. The article called "Turning Difference into a Catalyst" honors the history of Asian American Women on the Berkeley campus, as part of the 150 years of Women celebration.
The Dean and Chairs of the Division of Social Sciences initiated the Distinguished Teaching Award to encourage and reward faculty members who have been exceptionally generous and effective in both undergraduate and graduate teaching. The Distinguished Service Award recognizes a faculty member...
Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences honors excellence and convenes leaders from every field of human endeavor to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and work together, as expressed in our charter, “to cultivate every art and science...
The APS Rising Star designation is presented to outstanding APS members in the earliest stages of their research career post-PhD. Drawing its name from an Observer editorial series that featured exemplars of the exciting work being done by the field’s newest researchers, this designation...
The Distinguished Scientist Award is the Sleep Research Society’s highest award and recognizes significant, original and sustained scientific contributions of a basic, translational, clinical or theoretical nature to the sleep and circadian research field.
This award is given in recognition of APS members who have made transformative early-career contributions to psychological science.
The purpose of the Young Investigator Award is to recognize outstanding contributions by scientists early in their career.
This award recognizes APS members for a lifetime of outstanding contributions to the area of applied psychological research. Recipients must be APS members whose research addresses a critical problem in society at large.
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With sadness, we share the news of the passing of Art Shimamura at his home in Kailua, Hawaii, on October 6, 2020.
The Carol and Ed Diener Award in Personality Psychology is designed to recognize a mid-career scholar whose work has added substantially to the body of knowledge to the personality psychology field and/or brings together personality psychology and social psychology.
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The Rhoda and Bernard Sarnat International Prize in Mental Health is presented annually by the National Academy of Medicine. Rhoda and Bernard Sarnat established the award in 1992 out of a commitment to improving the science base and delivery of mental health services. This international award...
Jack Gallant never set out to create a mind-reading machine. His focus was more prosaic. A computational neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Gallant worked for years to improve our understanding of how brains encode information — what regions become active, for example...
Throughout 2020, the Psychology Department is joining the campus in celebrating 150 Years of Women at Berkeley. October 3, 2020 marks the 150th anniversary of the UC Regents’ unanimous approval in 1870 of a resolution by Regent Samuel F. Butterworth: “That young ladies be admitted into the University on equal terms in all respects with young men.” The first women were admitted as students to the university in 1872, four years after its opening in 1868.
Stephen Glickman, a pioneer in behavioral endocrinology and founder of the world’s first colony of captive spotted hyenas — he raised generations of them in a UC Berkeley research facility — died at his home in Berkeley on May 22 from pancreatic cancer. He was 87.
A professor...
Interviewed by: Hagit Caspi, Communication Specialist, College of Letters and Science
Joseph J. Campos, historically has been an early, and consistently creative contributor to the experimental study of the human infant. Conceptually, his major contributions have centered on theorizing on social referencing, elucidating the role of motor processes on...
Steve Hinshaw will receive the 2020 Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions from the American Psychological Association (APA).
Academy President David W. Oxtoby and Chair of the Board of Directors Nancy C. Andrews have announced that more than 250 outstanding individuals have been elected to the Academy in 2020.
Gopnik was selected from a field of nearly three thousand applicants, and joins a few other Berkeley colleagues in receiving this award for 20202. This coveted fellowship will support Gopnik’s work on children’s learning and development.
Throughout 2020, the Psychology Department is joining the campus in celebrating 150 Years of Women at Berkeley. October 3, 2020 marks the 150th anniversary of the UC Regents’ unanimous approval in 1870 of a resolution by Regent Samuel F. Butterworth: “That young ladies be admitted into the University on equal terms in all respects with young men.” The first women were admitted as students to the university in 1872, four years after its opening in 1868.
Daniel B. Wile (8/3/39 – 3/18/20), nationally and internationally known founder and developer of Collaborative Couple Therapy, died in his Oakland California home on Wednesday, March 18, after a long struggle with heart failure. With a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1966, Dan...
The SEP awards the Howard Crosby Warren Medal annually for outstanding achievement in Experimental Psychology in the United States and Canada.
Interviewed by: Hagit Caspi, Communication Specialist, College of Letters and Science
Originally established in 2008, the newly-named W.M. Cobb Award in Morphological Sciences recognizes investigators in the early stages of their careers who have made important contributions to biomedical science through research in the morphological sciences, as broadly defined, and have...
Christina Maslach, a UC Berkeley psychology professor emerita, has been honored with this year’s National Academy of Sciences Award for Scientific Reviewing for her pioneering research on job burnout and worker wellbeing. The prize comes with $25,000.
Maslach, who joined UC...