News

(by Alex Russell, College of Letters and Science)

How the brain remembers has a lot to do with focus. It’s in this area of cognitive science that Steven Luck, professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, has built a career pushing the frontiers of both science and teaching.

Ron Mangun, Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neurology and co-director of the Center for Mind and Brain at UC Davis, has just been awarded the 2024 Award for Education in Neuroscience by the Society for Neuroscience. This prize recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to undergraduate- and graduate-level neuroscience education and training. 

Victoria Cross, Associate Professor of Teaching, was recently Elected Fellow of APA Division 2 (Society for the Teaching of Psychology). According to APA, "fellow status is an honor bestowed upon American Psychological Association members who have shown evidence of unusual and outstanding contributions or performance in the field of psychology. Fellow status requires that a person's work has had a national impact on the field of psychology beyond a local, state or regional level.

Assistant Professor of Psychology Emorie Beck recently received a prestigious 2024-2025 Fellowship from the Society of Hellman Fellows. This fellowship is supported by an endowed program at all ten University of California campuses that provides research funding to "promising assistant professors who show capacity for great distinction in their chosen fields."

Professor Lisa Oakes received the UC Davis Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Research. Professor Oakes was nominated for this prestigious award by current and former students in her Infant Cognition Lab. The award recognizes dedication to excellence in research and exemplary mentoring of undergraduate research projects. Undergraduate students mentored by Professor Oakes routinely present their research findings at the annual UC Davis Undergraduate Research Conference. 

In "Why We Remember," Professor Charan Ranganath radically reframes the way we think about memory. Combining accessible language with cutting-edge research, he reveals the surprising ways our brains record the past and how we use that information to understand who we are in the present, and to imagine and plan for the future.

Alison Ledgerwood was selected as the most recent recipient of The Society for Personality and Social Psychology's (SPSP's) Award for Distinguished Service to the Society. The award "recognizes distinguished service specifically to SPSP. Distinguished service may be in terms of a particular, significant activity that benefited the Society or cumulative contributions, performed over time, to the Society.

Professor Brian Trainor, former graduate student Emily Wright, Ph.D. (shown in photo), and their collaborators report exciting new findings that testosterone is a key hormone that drives gender-based differences in responses to social stress in mice, in a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The study encompassed six separate experiments with mice to isolate what changes in the brain drive these differences between males and females.

Professor Simona Ghetti was elected as a fellow of the Society for Experimental Psychology: https://www.sepsych.org/fellows/.

The most recent U.S. News and World Report rankings place UC Davis #6 among public universities and #11 among undergraduate Psychology programs in the nation. For details, please read the press release: https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/uc-davis-rises-6th-among-nations-top-public-universities