Dissertation Defense
Title of Dissertation: East-Asian International Counseling Trainees' Experience of Conducting Therapy in the US: A Qualitative Investigation Jingging Liu Mentor: Clara Hill
Postdoctoral and Research fellows
Nina Hsu
Postdoc
Training Program :Current Research : As a post-doctoral fellow working jointly with Jared Novick and Susanne Jaeggi, I am interested in working memory (WM) the ability to hold and manipulate information in mind. Specifically, I am interested in (i) how WM abilities differ across individuals, (ii) what other cognitive processes (e.g., real-time language processing) share underlying behavioral and neural mechanisms with WM, and (iii) how interventions can improve WM skills and how training performance increases transfer to novel language tasks extending beyond the intervention regimen. I integrate experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and education to tackle these questions. Broadly, my research examines the interplay among cognitive abilities (e.g., memory, language), the neuroanatomical systems supporting their interaction, and the extent to which these brain-behavior relations are plastic.
Catalina Kopetz
Postdoc
Training Program : Clinical PsychologyFaculty Mentor : Arie Kruglanski
Current Research : Professional url (if any): http://kopetz.socialpsychology.org/ Academic credentials: Catalina holds a BA in psychology from Babe_-Bolyai University in Romania, a MA in experimental psychology from Université de Savoie in France, and a PhD from University of Maryland, College Park. She is currently working as a faculty research associate at the Center for Addictions, Personality, and Emotion Research at University of Maryland, College Park and as an associate assistant professor at Babe_-Bolyai University in Romania. Research: Catalina Kopetz research interests focus on self-regulation phenomena from the perspective of motivation as cognition. She is particularly interested in how the dynamic relation between goals and means may influence ones course of action. Her research resulted in several authored and co-authored papers. Current projects involve both theoretical and empirical research on the unconscious aspect of self-regulation in terms of goal-means and inter-goal associations and its implications for both normal (e. g. self-regulation of dieting behavior) and abnormal behavior (e. g. risk taking and addiction). She has been recently awarded a two-year NIDA fellowship to investigate the cognitive and motivational consequences of engaging in sex exchange for crack cocaine. Teaching: During her academic career, Catalina Kopetz has accumulated extensive teaching experience in social psychology and research methods.
Sandra Langeslag
Postdoc
Training Program : Cognitive and Neural Systems (CNS)Faculty Mentor : Luiz Pessoa
Current Research : I am fascinated by the neuroscience of the interaction between emotion and cognition. During my PhD, I have studied emotional memory in younger and older adults using event-related potentials (ERPs). As a side project, I have been studying the neurocognition of romantic love (e.g. how infatuated individuals attend to and memorize information about their beloved). During my post doc at the University of Maryland, I will focus on how emotion and motivation influence executive functioning, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and behavioral methods.
Brenton McMenamin
Postdoctoral Fellow
Training Program :Faculty Mentor : Luiz Pessoa
Keren Sharvit
Postdoc
Training Program : Social, Decision and Organizational Science (SDOS)Faculty Mentor : Arie Kruglanski
Current Research : My broad area of interest is the psychological processes that underlie intergroup conflicts and violence. On the one hand, I investigate motivational processes that lead individuals to engage in extreme behaviors in general, and to get involved with extremely violent terrorist groups in particular. I am also interested in interventions that may lead these individuals to abandon such violent behaviors. On the other hand, I investigate the psychological and social consequences of exposure to extreme violence in the context of intergroup conflict, and particularly the effect on societal beliefs and ideologies related to intergroup conflict. Finally, I am interested in social processes that allow members of groups that behave violently toward other groups to avoid the negative emotional consequences of their groups' behavior.