The American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE) has elected Nicole M. Bereolos, PhD, to a three-year term on its board of directors. Bereolos is a clinical psychologist in Dallas who specializes in the psychosocial issues of living with a chronic medical condition and conducts pre-surgical evaluations. She has been a certified diabetes educator since 2013 and is the AADE national spokesperson on the psychosocial aspects of diabetes.
The National Academy of Medicine elected three psychologists to its ranks: Richard J. Davidson, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Felicia Hill-Briggs, PhD, of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Chanita A. Hughes Halbert, PhD, of the Medical University of South Carolina. Membership in the academy is one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine and recognizes health-care professionals and scientists who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service.
The TANG Foundation has awarded its $100,000 Prize for Achievements in Psychology to Barbara Fredrickson, PhD, the Kenan Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Fredrickson is internationally known for her "broaden-and-build" theory of positive emotions. The central idea is that emotions such as joy and contentment expand awareness, allowing discovery of new ideas, pursuits and social bonds that over time build people's physical, intellectual and psychological resources. Her general interest books "Positivity" and "Love 2.0" have been translated into more than 20 languages.
The Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences presented a Leamer-Rosenthal Prize for Open Social Science to Simine Vazire, PhD, an associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis. The award recognizes Vazire's efforts to advance reproducibility and open science through her teaching and by co-founding the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science. Vazire directs the university's Personality and Self-Knowledge Lab, where she studies people's knowledge of their personalities and behaviors, and how personality and social relationships affect well-being.
The Division of Social Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has presented the Martin M. Chemers Award for Outstanding Research to psychology professor Barbara Rogoff, PhD. Rogoff studies cultural variations in learning and collaboration, with a special interest in indigenous-heritage children and families in Mexican, Guatemalan and U.S. communities. The division also presented its Distinguished Social Sciences Emeriti Award to retired UC Santa Cruz psychology professor Catherine Cooper, PhD. She founded the university's developmental psychology program and is best known for her research on the academic development of underrepresented youth.
The S&R Foundation has presented its $100,000 Kuno Award for Applied Science to Abigail Marsh, PhD, an associate professor in the department of psychology and the interdisciplinary neuroscience program at Georgetown University. The award supports innovators whose research has the potential to address society's most important problems. Marsh directs the university's Laboratory on Social and Affective Neuroscience, where she uses neuroimaging and cognitive and behavioral testing to study emotional processes such as empathy and how they relate to important social behaviors such as altruism and aggression.