Graduate Student Profiles
Jenni Deveau — Systems Neuroscience
jennifer.deveau[at]email.ucr.edu
I am in my second year in the systems neuroscience area, working with Dr. Edward Korzus. Our lab is studying how neural circuits hold knowledge and guide behavior. At the moment, I am developing my second year project which will focus on my primary research interest: the molecular basis of memory. I am interested in looking at different forms of memory such as short term to long term, as well as different brain regions involved in these processes. One of the advantages associated with our lab is the variety of techniques we use, including behavioral assays, neural imaging with brand new equipment, and transgenic mice.
A great benefit of belonging to the systems neuroscience area is the opportunity to work with a variety of faculty members in the Psychology and Neuroscience departments. An activity I particularly enjoy is our biweekly journal club. This is an informal environment attended by students and faculty members where we can discuss current literature or our own data. My advisor is extremely supportive, and encourages me to bring new ideas into the lab. A highlight of my time here so far has been the opportunity to attend the Society for Neuroscience conference the last two years.
UCR really understands the skills needed for future researchers and professors, and the graduate program is set up to help us succeed. My curriculum consists of classes from both Psychology and Neuroscience; giving me a broad knowledge base that will be especially beneficial when applying for jobs.
Kristin Layous — Social Personality
kristinlayous[at]yahoo.com
I am a student in the Social/Personality area working with Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky. My decision to come to graduate school was not an easy one, as I left a stable full-time job in a poor economic climate in order to do so. My interest in positive psychology was what drew me to further study and specifically to consider it at UCR, but the attributes of the entire department sealed my final decision to attend. Although the research merits of the faculty at UCR cannot be disputed, the approachability and collegiality of the faculty are what impressed me (and continues to impress me) the most. It is clear that the UCR faculty is truly interested in the success of the students and each other. This supportive tone trickles down to a cooperative learning environment among the graduate students as well. Along with the helpful faculty, the administrative staff that supports the psychology department provides valuable guidance to help graduate students navigate their way through the program. Attending UCR was absolutely the right choice for me to learn and grow as a researcher and teacher.
My research is primarily focused on happiness, specifically seeking answers to the following questions: 1) What leads some people to be happier than others? 2) Under what conditions can people improve their own levels of happiness? and 3) What types of behaviors/conditions forestall adaptation to positive life experiences? I am involved in multiple ongoing projects (either as principal researcher or co-investigator) to address these questions. Three examples are 1) a series of three well-being intervention studies being run simultaneously in the U.S. and South Korea to inform our intervention research as well as potential cross-cultural differences; 2) an experiment with a sample of monozygotic and dizygotic twins in the UK to explore genetic and environmental influences on individual differences in how people respond to happiness-increasing interventions; and 3) a school-based intervention study in which we are exploring the effects of positive activities on 11-year-olds in the UK.
A crucial part of the professional training of graduate students at UCR is the requirement that we present our work each year at our area’s weekly Brown Bag meeting. I am currently working on my second-year project, in which I am examining the role of variety in positive activity interventions (i.e., comparing participants who do two positive activities over the course of 6 weeks to participants who do a single activity or participants who engage in two control activities). My advisor and two faculty committee members will review my paper and the department will have an opportunity to ask me questions during my presentation this spring. This will be a valuable opportunity for me to obtain feedback on my work and presentation skills. I feel that student Brown Bag presentations are a valuable part of graduate student training at UCR and yet another way that the department is invested in our success.
Overall, I cannot imagine faculty, students, or staff more supportive than those at UCR. The caliber of research of the department is apparent, but the positive environment that accompanies the rigorous academic work of the department is what makes me feel fortunate to be pursuing my doctorate at UCR.
Russell Pierce — Cognitive
rouer001[at]ucr.edu
My research is concerned with cognitive control processes in the domain of vision (visual attention), memory (working memory), and behavior (dual-task and task-switching). In particular, I am interested in how these topics relate to human performance in real world tasks (human factors), especially in older adults. The coursework at UC Riverside (UCR) has helped me to develop and refine my research interests. John Andersen, my advisor, has taught me how to develop worthwhile research questions and identify how they apply in various task domains. He has also helped me become aware of the contributions that I can make to the field by expanding my research program to include predictions regarding the performance of older adults. As a result of his guidance I am nearly ready to begin my dissertation research on the relationships between 2D models of attention and the operation of 3D spatial attention in the context of a driving task in younger and older drivers. The academic culture at UC Riverside is very supportive of graduate student research. Since I enrolled at UCR I have published three journal articles, three proceedings papers, and seven abstracts.
As of Winter 2011, I have one article, two proceedings papers, and three abstracts under review as well as five manuscripts in preparation. As I have been productive in research, the department, the graduate school, and my advisor have generously funded me to attend and present at meetings of the Psychonomics Society, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Society of Computers in Psychology, and Vision Sciences Society. This year I expect to add Driving Assessment and a University of California Transportation Center meeting to that list. Since UCR has been so generous with me, I have sought to give back whenever I could do so without impeding my research program. In addition to my role as researcher, I have had several other roles including starting the psychology graduate student association, serving as an international peer mentor, a graduate peer mentor, a graduate student representative to the department chair, as an ad hoc reviewer for the Cognitive Science Society, and as an ad hoc reviewer for the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. I also applied for and received extramural funding in the form of the University of California Transportation Center fellowship. I am happy with my decision to attend UCR as I can imagine no other academic environment that would have suited me better during this stage of my career.
Ryan Rush — Cognitive
ryan.rush[at]email.ucr.edu
When I first began the arduous task of deciding where to apply and eventually go to graduate school I was most concerned with finding a good advisor/mentor and a university with a strong research background. I quickly found that UCR met those concerns and greatly exceeded my expectations. The faculty at UCR is among the best in the field among their areas of specialty. Arguably their work has had a prolific influence on the psychological community. With that said, the faculty at UCR is unusually humble about their accomplishments and approachable under any circumstances. This cooperative and friendly environment at UCR allows faculty and graduate students to work together across departments collaborating on different research projects.
UCR offers and encourages graduate students to conduct innovative and meaningful research projects that not only advance the understanding of the field but also incorporate rigorous experimental methodologies. Students are trained in how to understand and apply different statistical techniques and procedures.
The cognitive area at UCR offers great courses of the foundations of cognitive psychology and also specialized statistical and research methods courses. The faculty in this area has a wide range of interests including visual perception, category learning, psycholinguistics, audiovisual speech perception, eyewitness memory, and individual differences in the neural substrates for reading and language.
Currently my research focuses on eyewitness memory and decision-making. I work in the Social Cognitive Processes laboratory under the advising of Dr. Steven Clark. I am interested in understanding the causes of memory distortion during an eyewitness experience, as well as, understanding what decision-making strategies witnesses use when they make an identification.
Dr. Steven Clark like many of the faculty members at UCR treats his and other graduate students like colleagues. It is this professional, yet friendly environment that I believe makes UCR stand out amongst other top research universities. UCR also provides graduates students with many other great academic resources, financial support, and health care making the university a great place to spend a 5-year graduate career.
Ryne Sherman — Social/Personality
ryne.sherman[at]email.ucr.edu
The reputation of the faculty at UCR is second to none and speaks for itself, but more importantly the faculty at UCR are some of the most approachable and friendly people to work with. In fact, the relationship between the graduate students and the faculty is such that many of the faculty already consider and treat the graduate students as colleagues. This creates a cooperative research and learning environment where opportunities for collaboration with graduate students and faculty in other labs are abound. Weekly lunch time meetings keep graduate students and faculty up to date with the most recent research their colleagues are doing and develop presentation and communication skills; skills which are no doubt critical to any job one might pursue.
Additionally, UCR offers ample teaching and teaching assistant opportunities for its graduate students to gain invaluable experience teaching undergraduate students. Currently in the third year of the program, I have already been a teaching assistant for a variety of courses including personality, undergraduate statistics, graduate statistics, and research methods.
My current research focuses on understanding and measuring the psychologically important properties of situations and is conducted in the Riverside Accuracy Lab under the advising of Dr. David Funder. I am interested in understanding what psychological features of situations are important to how people behave and feel.
Overall, UCR is a wonderful place for graduate students and I could not imagine myself being a graduate student anywhere else.
Erin Smith — Developmental
esmit006[at]ucr.edu
I am a third year student studying developmental psychology. The decision to make UCR the place of my graduate studies was not difficult. UCR as a campus, and the psychology department, offer a diverse and exciting experience. The department encourages scientific thought and activity in a collaborative fashion that facilitates the advancement of psychological knowledge, an experience that will be invaluable in determining future career decisions for me. Aside from the rigorous statistical and methodological training I have received, my time as a teaching assistant has been essential for the development of my strengths as a soon-to-be "expert" in the field of developmental psychology. (I would expect such training to also be indispensable to any graduate student as they prepare for a career in research, teaching, or private industry.)
Working with Rebekah Richert in the Childhood Cognition Lab (http://www.ccl.ucr.edu/) has allowed me to more deeply consider my own research interests which centers on how children learn about and believe in information given "second hand". Considering how much children (and adults!) believe that they never see for themselves—such as the work of particular microscopic organisms or the work of a supernatural being—understanding these processes will shed light on quintessential elements of cognitive development and influence our understanding of how scientific theory should be taught, among other things. Also included in these questions are how and what individuals learn from media sources, a particularly salient form of testimony in the lives of children. One of the more enjoyable aspects of my work is that the faculty seems exceptionally willing to encourage basic and applied research, as each student sees most appropriate for their own career aspirations. In my experience, I have had considerable say in the course and direction of my research efforts, a case that is (unfortunately) not true at all universities.
In sum, I feel very privileged to work alongside faculty and students of the kind of caliber I have seen at UCR. I have no doubt that my training will make me a desirable candidate when I am ready to face the job market, and that I will be confident in my knowledge, skills, and ability.
Loryana Vie — Social/Personality
loryana.vie[at]email.ucr.edu
I am a second year student in the Social/Personality Program, and my advisors are Dr. Chandra Reynolds and Dr. Howard Friedman. I chose UC Riverside because I was impressed with the merit of research being conducted as well as the friendly and supportive learning environment. Here at UCR, I have the freedom and flexibility to do research in social, health, personality, and developmental psychology. Every Thursday my area has a lunch meeting where students, faculty, or visiting speakers give presentations to the group. This is a great opportunity for people to get feedback on their work as well as gain experience presenting their research. Tuesdays I attend a similar lunch meeting, where statistical topics are solely discussed.
In my research, I am primarily interested in the long-term consequences of marital quality on health and longevity across the lifespan, with a particular focus on specific cause of death. My lab works with data from the Terman Life Cycle Study, which was started in 1921 by Lewis M. Terman as a study of gifted children. The individuals in this study were followed on average every five to ten years throughout their lives. Death certificates have been collected and medically coded for the vast majority of the participants. Access to this data set was another major factor in my decision to attend UC Riverside.
Overall, the psychology department at UC Riverside has exciting research, high quality teaching, and numerous opportunities for graduate students to become more involved. I am happy I decided to come here, and I know that I will be very well prepared, and as a competitive candidate, when I complete my program and enter the job market.studies here at UCR will prove invaluable to my future as a researcher, scholar, professor, or industry professional. Whatever path I decide to take, having a strong foundation in research and teaching from UCR will always be a major plus!