2008-09 Erlbaum Winners' Biographies
The chair of the Psi Chi/Erlbaum Awards in Cognitive Science Committee, Maria Lavooy, PhD, has announced the winners of the 2008-09 Erlbaum Awards. Psi Chi congratulates these 2008-09 winners of the Erlbaum Award and wishes them continued success in their education and careers. Cash awards of $500 each were presented to Ms. Zabelina and Ms. Gold as the winners of this award.
Read abstracts of these award-winning papers here.
An artist herself, Darya Zabelina’s personal interest in creativity
dates many years back. Academically, she became involved in
creativity research as an undergraduate sophomore under the
Advanced Undergraduate Research Award (AURA) from the
NIH/EPSCoR Foundation.
Ms. Zabelina is currently a second-year master’s student at North
Dakota State University working with Dr. James Council and Dr.
Michael Robinson. Her research interests primarily revolve
around cognitive processes, affective processes, motivation, and personality aspects involved in creativity and intelligence. She also has a keen interest in exploring ways of enhancing and fostering the development of creative thinking and problem-solving ability. Ms. Zabelina is an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, and plans on entering a PhD program in the fall of 2010.
Nina B. Gold, originally from Newton, MA, graduated summa cum laude with a BA in psychology from Colby College in May 2009. At Colby, she became passionate about cognitive development and pediatric medicine. Ms. Gold has pursued
these interests in a variety of clinical and research settings.
She volunteered on a pediatric unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) under the guidance of Child Life Specialists
Marilyn Gifford and Ashley Reardon, and Chief of Child Psychiatry Consultation Service to Pediatrics, Dr. Paula Rauch. Ms. Gold also served as coordinator of MGH’s Junior Volunteer Program. In 2008, she collaborated with Professor Tarja Raag on an investigation of the social ramifications of mindfulness. In 2009, Ms. Gold wrote and illustrated a book to help pediatric patients cope with the experience of long-term hospitalization. She currently works as a clinical research assistant in the Department of Teratology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.