Adriane Soehner, PhD, & Mary Woody, PhD, Honored as Association for Psychological Science Rising Stars
Many congratulations to Adriane Soehner, PhD (Assistant Professor of Psychiatry), and Mary Woody, PhD (Assistant Professor of Psychiatry), who were recently named Association for Psychological Science (APS) Rising Stars!
The APS Rising Star designation is presented to outstanding APS members in the earliest stages of their research careers after completing doctoral training.
Dr. Soehner examines the mechanisms through which sleep-circadian disturbances may increase vulnerability to affective disorders in adolescents and young adults. Today, she leads a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) K01 career development grant examining the extent to which sleep variability exacerbates pre-existing neural and behavioral vulnerabilities in reward-control processes among adolescents at high- versus low-risk for bipolar disorder.
“Adriane takes an innovative, thoughtful, translational approach to understanding and preventing the development of affective disorders. She has made meaningful contributions to developmental affective neuroscience, and her research will undoubtedly continue to inspire progress. She very much deserves this great honor,” said Erika Forbes, PhD (Professor of Psychiatry, Pediatrics, Psychology and Clinical and Translational Science).
Dr. Woody uses steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) to provide a temporally sensitive biological index of attention to competing visual stimuli at the level of neuronal populations in the visual cortex. With support from an NIMH K23 career development award, she is currently investigating the visuocortical dynamics of affect-biased attention in the development of adolescent depression.
“This is Mary in a nutshell: intellectually pioneering, savvy, with keen discernment and a boundless work ethic,” said Rebecca Price, PhD (Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology). “She displays a striking ability to take risks and obtain technical expertise in neural, physiological, statistical, and behavioral methods. Dr. Woody is indubitably a quintessential rising star (if not a ‘risen’ star!). I have great gratitude for the opportunity to work with her and am off-the-charts enthusiastic about continuing and expanding our collaboration for years to come.”
Congratulations to Dr. Soehner and Dr. Woody!