News
I wanted to send a quick shot out to lab alumna Lauren who recently started her first year at UMASS Medical School. Lauren was a spectacular student, researcher and baker of rodent themed confections. She is going to kill it (not literally) up in Worcester and be a great physician. If you see Lauren around looking sleepy from studying, buy her a coffee for us!
Crazy good news. Check out the link below. We're so very honored the kind, hard-working Caiafa family has chosen us to represent them. Leo's story is the quintessential American success story and we couldn't be more thrilled to have our new Center for Psychological Science bare his name.
Congratulations to our colleagues across town. We're happy to have been one of the first labs to work with the home cage monitoring system they developed. It has the potential to be a real game changer.
Lab alum Sharon Longo has accepted an offer to attend Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. We are super proud and thrilled for Sharon. She is going to make a wonderful physician. I'm also hoping that she'll ship us out some Hoagies.
Wow! In two related stories....
1. Big congratulations to PC KidThink and PAN lab alum Kelly Sheehan. She just defended her dissertation at Northwestern University. Bravo Dr. Sheehan. I believe that makes our 6th former lab member to complete their Ph.D.
2. I am old.
Super exciting news around here today. PAN lab member Megan Gallo has accepted an offer to begin her Ph.D. studies at Brown University this fall. Megan will be joining the lab of Dr. Kevin Bath, a world-class scientist and great mentor. Megan has been working with us on our model of BDD and has been an amazing member of the team without whom the project simply couldn't have succeeded. Megan has also worked with Dr. Snodgrass (@psnodgrassbelt) on her work in circadian biology and has benefitted greatly from Dr. Pam's experience and expertise. I'm certain she will hit the ground running when she turns up on College Hill and will be a force to be reckoned with.
Great news in the lab today. Filip Wilk was awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research Grant! The project entitled, Adolescent Stress and Later Psychopathology, will utilize predator odor as a stressor in juvenility. Later in adolescence a yoked signaled avoidance procedure will help determine how controllability of adolescent stressors interacts with early-life trauma to potentially develop adulthood disorders of anxiety. Filip will receive a full summer salary to work in the lab and carry out his really exciting project.
The lab just got some great news. Our research grant proposal was approved to extend our funding for an additional year. This will allow us to continue to investigate a model of body dysmorphism this summer by hiring 3 full-time undergraduate research students. Thanks to RI-INBRE for supporting our work!
In May, PAN students Megan Grammatico, Kate Sulka & Katie Dahlborg traveled to NYC to present their work at The Association for Psychological Science (APS) conference. In between research talks they bought tiny cupcakes in Times Square. Really tiny cupcakes.
