The National Academy of Medicine has presented the 2020 Rhoda and Bernard Sarnat International Prize in Mental Health to Stephen P. Hinshaw, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. The $20,000 prize recognizes Hinshaw’s more than three decades of research on child and adolescent mental health and his persistent efforts to reduce stigma of mental illness. Hinshaw is also the recipient of APA’s 2020 Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions.
Harvard University psychology professor Elizabeth A. Phelps, PhD, has won the George A. Miller Prize in Cognitive Neuroscience from the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. The prize honors scholars whose work has the potential to revolutionize the field. Phelps’s research focuses on how variations in people’s emotions can affect cognition, including memory.
The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities has presented a W.K. Kellogg Foundation Community Engagement Scholarship Award to the Connecting Cultures program at the University of Vermont, the brainchild of psychology professor Karen Fondacaro, PhD, and colleagues in the university’s clinical psychology program. Connecting Cultures offers evidence-based mental health services to refugees and survivors of torture in Vermont and has served more than 1,000 refugees from more than 30 countries. Staff also work with the community to conduct research on refugee mental health and offer training to psychology students on how to provide culturally competent services to refugees.
Damien Fair, PhD, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain at the University of Minnesota Medical School, has won a 2020 MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant. The prestigious grant is a $625,000, no-strings attached award to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential. Fair combines technical advances in fMRI, advanced mathematical techniques, and expertise in both psychology and neuroscience to investigate resting-state brain connectivity—the brain’s intrinsic or spontaneous neural activity.
Deanna Barch, PhD, Elisabeth Binder, MD, PhD, and Velma McBride Murry, PhD, are among the newest members of the National Academy of Medicine, which elects scholars and leaders in health and medicine who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement. Barch is a professor and chair of the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Binder directs the Department of Translational Research in Psychiatry at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry. McBride Murry holds the Lois Autrey Betts Endowed Chair and is a university professor in the Departments of Health Policy and Human and Organizational Development, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and Peabody College, Vanderbilt University.
The Behavioral Health Education Center of Nebraska (BHECN) has presented its annual Ambassador Award to Kim Hill, PhD, a clinical psychologist at the Beatrice Community Hospital and Health Center in Beatrice, Nebraska. Hill was honored for her work to create a new behavioral health fellowship position at her hospital. Hill also helped train and supervise the first fellow, who is now working at the hospital full time. BHECN is a partnership between the Nebraska state legislature and academic institutions that aims to increase the number of mental health providers in the state.