Apply for neuropsychology scholarships

The American Psychological Foundation (APF) and APA's Div. 40 (Clinical Neuropsychology) are seeking applications for the Arthur Benton and Manfred Meier Neuropsychology Scholarships. Each $2,500 grant is awarded to a graduate student who shows great promise or achievement in their scholarly and research activity. Students must also demonstrate financial need.

Applicants should submit a letter documenting their accomplishments, financial need and proposed use of the scholarship. The letter should be co-signed by their faculty mentor or director of training after he or she has certified the accuracy of the student's information. Send seven copies to the Benton and Meier Scholarships, American Psychological Foundation, at the APA address. All applications must be received by June 1.

Nominate health psychologists for Jeffrey award

APF seeks nominations of outstanding health psychologists for the Timothy Jeffrey Memorial Award. The $1,000 award recognizes an outstanding commitment to clinical health psychology by a full-time provider of direct clinical services.

Nominees must spend at least 15 hours weekly in direct, face-to-face patient care, including assessment or therapy in individual or group settings. Applicants must be fully licensed clinical health psychologists and members of Div. 38 (Health), which administers this award.

The deadline for nominations is May 1. Nomination letters should describe the nominee's practice, professional activities and commitment to the field. Nominations must be accompanied by a current curriculum vitae, at least one letter of support from a professional, nonpsychologist colleague and one letter from a psychologist colleague. Letters from students or supervisees are not accepted. APF and Div. 38 welcome self-nominations and encourage a description of a clinical case in which the nominee's work has had a particular effect on an individual, family or group. For more information, visit www.apa.org/apf/jeffrey.html.

APF offers $20,000 in violence prevention grants

APF is seeking proposals for research-based programs on violence prevention and intervention. Applicants may request up to $20,000. With the grant, the APF Board of Trustees hopes to:

• Encourage the application of psychological science to understanding and preventing violence.

• Support innovative community programs aimed at preventing violence in social settings.

• Provide seed money for promising interventions proposed by community-based organizations or provide funding for established, successful community programs.

Applicants must be psychologists with a doctoral degree who are involved with a research-based program related to violence prevention. Special consideration will be given to programs with a strong research foundation and those that have, or show promise for, broad-based community support. The submission deadline is June 1. For more information and complete application guidelines, visit www.apa.org/apf/violence.html or call (202) 336-5814.

APF awards 13 graduate research scholarships

APF and the Council of Graduate Departments of Psychology (COGDOP) presented 13 Graduate Research Scholarships in 2005.

The following are the top recipients:

• Jillian Holm-Denoma is the winner of the $3,000 Ruth G. and Joseph D. Matarazzo Scholarship. She is a fourth-year clinical psychology doctoral candidate at Florida State University. Her primary research interest is the classification and assessment of eating disorders. She also is interested in identifying genetic vulnerabilities of anorexia nervosa and examining how eating disorders affect racial and ethnic minorities.

• Jennifer Mohawk, the $2,000 Clarence J. Rosecrans Scholarship winner, is a fifth-year graduate student in the biopsychology program at the University of Michigan. Her dissertation research focuses on interactions between the stress response and circadian rhythms. She aims to elucidate the role of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activation in modulation of recovery rate following a shift of the light-dark cycle.

The following students each won $1,000 scholarships:

• Deann Atchley, a fifth-year neuroscience and psychology graduate student at Florida State University. His research interests include the influence of serotonin on development of activity-based anorexia, an animal model of anorexia and the influence of ovarian hormones on food intake and body weight regulation in female rats.

• Debbie Talmi, a fifth-year psychology doctoral student at the University of Toronto. Talmi studies memory mechanisms and the effect of emotion on memory through behavior, lesion and neuroimaging experiments.

• Eric D. Jackson, a seventh-year psychology graduate student studying clinical science and cognitive neuroscience at the University of Arizona. His research investigates the development of emotional memories and conditioned fear, particularly in humans experiencing stress. He has established and currently maintains a psychophysiology and psychoneuroendocrinology lab to explore these topics.

• Julia Dmitrieva, a seventh-year doctoral candidate in psychology and social behavior at the University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses on adolescent internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors in the context of immediate social and cultural influences.

• Nina Kaiser, a fifth-year clinical psychology graduate student at Purdue University. Her research focuses on relations among children's self-perceptions, children's perceptions of their peers, childhood externalizing behavior problems and, in particular, the way in which self-perceptions and self-perceptual accuracy may moderate children's responses to treatment.

• Karen M. Rodrigue, a fifth-year psychology doctoral candidate at Wayne State University. Her research focuses on understanding the effects of age-related brain changes on cognition within a healthy aging paradigm. Her dissertation research uses magnetic resonance imaging to examine the role of vascular health and microvascular function in age-related decline in brain structure and cognitive performance in a lifespan sample of healthy adults.

• Kristen M. Kennedy, a fifth-year psychology graduate student at Wayne State University whose research interests lie in the cognitive neuroscience of aging. Specifically, her dissertation research examines the integrity of the connective white matter fibers in the brain, using diffusion tensor imaging. She plans to relate the age-differences in white matter integrity to age differences in memory and executive functions.

• Emily Kuhl, a third-year clinical and health psychology doctoral student at the University of Florida. She specializes in behavioral medicine with an emphasis on working with cardiac patients. She is currently completing her dissertation, which focuses on the effect of a Web-based psychoeducation program for recipients of implantable cardiac defibrillators.

• Ryan Bogdan, a third-year clinical psychology doctoral candidate at Harvard University. His research examines how genetics and stress influence neural and behavioral reward processing.

• Sara Chiara Haden, a fourth-year clinical psychology doctoral candidate at Virginia Tech. Her research focuses on risk and protective factors involved in the development of aggressive behavior in children.

• Simine Vazire, a fifth-year graduate student in personality and social psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research aims to identify the cognitive processes underlying self- and other-judgment, and examine the motivational and informational sources of differences between self- and other-perception.

APF invites all graduate departments of psychology in good standing with COGDOP to nominate candidates each year for these scholarships, which may be used by students to pay for research costs, travel to a scientific meeting or books and supplies. For more information, visit www.apa.org/apf.

—Compiled by E. Merck, I. Ramos and E. Packard