2003-04 Guilford Winners' Biographies
The chair of the Psi Chi/ J. P. Guilford Undergraduate Research Awards Committee, Christopher Koch, PhD, has announced the winners of the competition. The first place winner is Abigail L. Riggs of Southwestern University (TX) for her paper entitled "'His and Her' Heart Attacks:
The Effects of Gender Relevance on Women's Receptiveness to Health-Related Information." The second place winner is Christopher Marcus Crew of the University of California, Riverside for his paper entitled "A High-Dimensional Computational Model of Racial Bias in the News Media." The third place winner is Kinjal Doshi of New York University for her paper entitled "Chronic Pain and Disability in HIV-Associated Distal Symmetric Polyneuropathy." Psi Chi congratulates these 2003-04 winners of the Guilford Awards and wishes them continued success. Cash awards were as follows: $1,000 for first place, $650 for second place, and $350 for third place.
Read abstracts of these award winning papers here.
Abigail Riggs, the first place winner, is a junior at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, but is originally from Brenham, Texas. She plans on graduating in December of 2004 with a bachelor's degree in psychology. Ms. Riggs plans to start graduate school the next fall in hopes of earning a PhD in social psychology. Ms. Riggs presented her research in Chicago at the American Psychological Society's convention in May. She also plans to submit the paper for publication. In addition to the Guilford Award, she also won a Psi Chi research award at the 2004 meeting of the Southwestern Psychological Association, which was held in San Antonio, TX. Ms. Riggs also received a fellowship from her university to continue research this past summer with her mentor Dr. Traci Giuliano. Along with conducting research, she is also a lab assistant for the Research Methods class. In her spare time she likes to read and see movies. Ms. Riggs would like to thank her parents and her mentor, Dr. Traci Giuliano, for all their help and support.
Christopher Marcus Crew, the second place winner, is the ninth of ten children and a first generation college student. This has been a challenge for Mr. Crew but has made his family, and himself, very proud. Mr. Crew graduated in June of 2004 with a BA in Psychology from the University of California, Riverside. Mr. Crew states that his enjoyment and satisfaction gained through his coursework, and research, has convinced him to pursue a doctorate in psychology in preparation for a career in university research and teaching. He has conducted research in a neuroscience lab, a biochemistry lab, a social psychology lab, and he is currently researching in a psycholinguistic and computational cognition lab, under the supervision of Curt Burgess, PhD.
During the summer of 2002, he was the recipient of a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) grant from the National Science Foundation in the Department of Biochemistry with Dr. Kathy Borkovich. He has presented his research at several conferences, notably, Stanford University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Psychonomics Society Research Conferences in Vancouver, Canada. Mr. Crew says that his most gratifying achievements, thus far, have been his election as Vice-President of his school's Psi Chi chapter in addition to receiving the UC Day Undergraduate Research Award and the UCR Psi Chi Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award.
Kinjal Doshi, the third place winner, is currently completing her undergraduate education in psychology and neural science at New York University. Currently, she continues her research, with grants provided by the university, in the psychological and psychosocial contributions towards pain behavior and pain-related disability. She is eager to pursue her interest in health and medical-related psychology, as well as counseling, to the graduate level.
As a Psi Chi Member of the chapter at New York University, she was vice-president for the 2003-2004 school year. For the concurrent year, she continues to assist the Psi Chi Chapter with the newly-established mentoring program for undergraduate psychology students.