Richard McCarty, a distinguished psychologist who has led the largest school at Vanderbilt University for the past seven years, will be presented to the Vanderbilt Board of Trust next week for confirmation as the university’s chief academic officer.

The Dissertation Enhancement Review Committee has awarded Jejoong Kim a DEG in the amount of $2,000 for dissertation research. Congratulations!

The Dissertation Enhancement Review Committee has awarded Peiyan Wong a DEG in the amount of $2,000 for dissertation research. Congratulations!

Josh Buckholtz, a Neuroscience graduate student, has just been awarded the first-ever graduate student prize for outstanding research in Neuroeconomics by the Claremont Graduate University's Center for Neuroeconomic Studies. Josh was awarded the prize for his paper "The Neural Basis of Legal Decision-Making." Josh worked with Rene Marois, David Zald, Chris Asplund, Paul Duxe, John Gore, and Owen Jones on this project.

Katy Thakkar received a ThinkSwiss Research Scholarship awarded by the Swiss Federal government to work on a collaborative project in the summer at the Neurology clinic of the University of Zurich. She will be examining mental rotation in patients with focal lesions and if possible, examine patients who experience out-of-body phenomenon with Dr. Peter Brugger's group.

The Department of Psychology and Human Development is delighted beyond measure to announce that Georgene Troseth has received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor in the department. Congratulations to Georgene on a superb accomplishment!!

Research by Leanne Boucher, Thomas Palmeri, Gordon Logan, and Jeff Schall appears in Psychological Review.

To honor his contributions to the treatment and primary prevention of depression, Steve Hollon received the Alexander Heard Distinguished Service Professor Award from Vanderbilt. This award recognized his role in demonstrating the long-term efficacy of cognitive therapy for depression, and for his contributions to the professional community through his training of numerous cognitive-behavioral therapists in the greater Nashville area.

René Marois's research with Paul Dux, Jason Ivanoff, and Christopher Asplund was highlighted on the front page of the March 25th edition of the New York Times. Their work elucidates the neural mechanisms underlying the information processing bottleneck that occurs when attempting to perform multiple tasks simultaneously.

Seventy-six million dollars in grants. Fifty-two research projects. One hundred investigators. Three national research centers. These are just some of the accomplishments the Learning Sciences Institute has racked up since its launch in 2003.

Sang-Hun Lee received his PhD from Vanderbilt in 2001 under the mentorship of Randolph Blake. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Seoul National University in Korea.

The graduate program in Neuroscience at Vanderbilt has been ranked # 2 in the country for Faculty Scholarly Index, which is a a composite measure published by the Chronicle of Higher Education. This is a testimony to the high quality, impact, and visibility of the work conducted by Neuroscience faculty, graduate students, post-docs, and other laboratory members at Vanderbilt --- a number of whom are affiliated with the Department of Psychology.

The Student Affairs Committee of the Graduate Faculty Council has awarded Jeff Nyquist a Dissertation Enhancement Grant in the amount of $2000. Congratulations!

Randolph Blake, Centennial Professor in the Department of Psychology, has received the College of Arts and Science Graduate Mentoring Award. This award is given annually to a faculty member who has served as an exemplary mentor to graduate students -- and in Randolph's case is definitely well-deserved. Congratulations!

Thomas Palmeri and Isabel Gauthier were part of a core team of eight scientists from Vanderbilt, the University of California-San Diego and Rutgers University that worked together to develop the winning proposal for a multimillion dollar NSF Science of Learning Center.

Dr. David Schlundt, Associate Professor of Psychology, has received the Levi Watkins Jr. Faculty Award by the Vanderbilt School of Medicine to honor his commitment to diversity.

Dr. Kaas has been invited to present on the topic Model-Organism and Comparative Approaches in the Neurosciences at the National Academy of Sciences Sackler Colloquium The New Comparative Biology of Human Nature on November 17-18, 2006 in Irvine, CA. For more program and registration information see www.nasonline.org/Sackler_neurosciences.

Randolph Blake and two colleagues' research has earned them an Ig Nobel, the annual award given at Harvard University by Annals of Improbable Research magazine for research on why the sound of nails on a blackboard elicits such a negative reaction.

Bunmi Olatunji, Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, is one of 15 individuals who have been designated as the most promising new psychological scientists by the American Psychological Association. As a result of his selection for this honor, Bunmi will be presenting his work at the APA Science Leadership Conference in Washington DC in December. Congratuations, Bunmi, on this well-deserved honor.

Kenneth Catania, Associate Professor, Department of Biological Sciences has been named a 2006 MacArthur Fellow. In his work as a comparative neurobiologist, Catania has been investigating the central nervous systems of unusual animals to generate new insights into the mammalian cortex--how it evolves, develops and responds to changing conditions. Ken was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology working with Jon Kaas and he is currently an affiliated faculty member in the neuroscience area group.

Randolph Blake, Centennial Professor in the Department of Psychology, will be delivering the lecture, "Seeing Colors in the Mind's Eye: Studies of Color-Graphemic Synesthesia," this Friday at the pretigious Helmboltz Institute in Ultrecht, the Netherlands as part of the Helmholtz lecture series for 2006/2007.

Bjoern Rump, graduate-student with the Department of Psychology, has been awarded a travel grant to attend and present at the Spatial Cognition 2006 Conference to be held in Bremen Germany, September 25-October 17, 2006. Congratulations!

Kate Berlin, graduate-student in the Department of Psychology, has been awarded a $500 travel grant to attend and present at the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies meeting to be held in Chicago, November 16-19, 2006. Congratulations!

Jon Kaas, Centennial Professor of Psychology, wrote “The Evolution of the Neocortex from Early Mammals to Modern Humans,” and René Marois, Assistant Professor of Psychology, wrote “Capacity Limits of Information Processing in the Brain,” two of seven articles included in an issue of Phi Kappa Phi Forum that was recognized with a 2006 Magnum Opus Silver Award for best series of articles and a 2006 APEX Award of Excellence for Feature Series Writing.

Jon H. Kaas, Vanderbilt University Centennial Professor of Psychology, has received the 2006 Karl Spencer Lashley Award from the American Philosophical Society in recognition of his pioneering work in the field of neurobiology.

Vanderbilt psychologist Randolph Blake has been named to a distinguished class of scientists, politicians, authors, artists and others, the American Academy of Arts and Science announced April 24.

Congratulations to Frank Tong and colleague Yukiyasu Kamitani for being included in Scientific American's Scientific American 50 Award 2005. This annual award is for technological advances in research, and business or policy planning. Franks recent discoveries in brain imaging and neural decoding landed him this award.

Jon Kaas, distinguished professor of psychology, has received approval and sponsorship from the National Academy of Sciences to host a special research colloquium, “The New Comparative Biology of Human Nature."

Congratulations to Frank Tong for being selected to receive the 2006 Young Investigator Award by the Cognitive Neuroscience Society.

Congratulations to Randolph Blake and Chai-Youn Kim for a top-twenty downloaded psychology article.

Congratulations to René Marois for receiving a Chancellor's Award for Research this year. These awards recognize excellence in research, scholarship, or creative expression.

Many researchers have published 100 scholarly articles, but 100 articles in the same journal? Centennial Professor of Psychology Jon Kaas accomplished this unusual feat with the publication of his 100th paper in the Journal of Comparative Neurology.