2026 Psychological and Brain Sciences Newsletter
Message from the Chair
Department Spotlights
Department Kudos
Alumni Class Notes
Message from the Chair
Greetings to all our alumni from the George Washington University Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences!
I hope that you will take this time to read our annual newsletter and celebrate, along with us, the various successes that our department members have had over the past year. This has not been an easy year for our department, and for the university. Grants were canceled, and then ultimately reinstated; some of the graduate students lost funding; and there is a greater context of financial difficulties that lie ahead. Despite all the challenges, we keep thriving in our two core missions: teaching and research. We are continuing to teach more undergraduates than ever before, and we still have healthy grant and foundation funding that is supporting our research.
Highlights: This year we welcomed our first cohort of MS in Applied Psychology students under the directorship of Dr. Stephen Mitroff. Our faculty and graduate students continue to conduct cutting-edge research and publish in top tier journals. Our faculty are receiving high honors from their professional societies (Sarah Shomstein, mid-career award from Psychonomic Society) and continue to receive grant funding even under these challenging conditions (Drs. Mitroff and Dwight Kravitz, U.S. Army Research laboratory grant; Dr. Jody Ganiban, NIH; Dr. Shomstein, Australian Science Foundation). Our graduate students are supported by prestigious grants: David Kalwicz, Saskia Jorgensen and Lauryn Hoard all received National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants; Lauren Kobylski, Myla Lyons and Kiara Anese Barnett received grants from the DC. Psychological Association. And our graduate students are recognized for their teaching efforts: Taisha Blanc was awarded a university-wide teaching award (Phillip Amsterdam).
Alumni. We will contact you soon about some fabulous alumni events that will be scheduled this year, and I hope you have the opportunity to attend one of them and engage with fellow graduates.
Undergraduates today: The Psi Chi national psychology honor society flourished last year, and inducted the most members ever! Our major continues to grow, and more students than ever are engaged in undergraduate research.
If you would like to engage with the department in any capacity, do not hesitate to reach out to me. I love to hear from our alumni.
Thank you so much for your support and involvement, now more than ever. Please stay in touch.
Sarah Shomstein
Department Chair, Hunt Professor of Psychology
Department Spotlights
Your Money in Action: Supporting the Next Generation of GW Psychology Students
We wish to express our gratitude for past donations to our department and to welcome new contributions! Alumni donations, large and small, enhance psychology students’ academic experience and enable us to offer new learning opportunities. Your gifts directly support undergraduate and graduate student research, conference travel, applied practica, community-based projects, emergency scholarship funds and summer training.
For anyone interested in making a larger contribution, we would be happy to work with you to create the opportunity you envision, whether it be a small grant program, undergraduate summer research award or doctoral fellowship in your name. Like many other academic institutions, we are facing increasing financial pressures, and your donations would make a difference now more than ever. We hope you will consider making a gift to our department and investing in the next generation of psychology students and future psychologists.
Implementing the New Master of Science in Applied Psychology Program
In August, we welcomed our first class of 15 students in the new Master of Science (MS) in Applied Psychology program. The program is designed to provide students with comprehensive knowledge about how to use psychology to inform and improve real-world operations and outcomes. Students gain exposure to a wide range of psychological theories and develop proficiency in qualitative and quantitative research methods. The program also offers elective courses and extracurricular opportunities to strengthen skills in students’ chosen area of expertise.
Special thanks to Director of Graduate Studies Stephen Mitroff and Advisory Committee members Tonya Dodge, Dwight Kravitz and Cynthia Rohrbeck for all of their hard work in designing the program and getting it off the ground!
Understanding Behavioral Development
In a video conversation with Dean Paul Wahlbeck, Cognitive Neuroscience Professor Gabriella Rosenblau discusses how social cognition develops in childhood, particularly for those with autism.
Department Kudos
PhD student Kiara Anese Barnett was awarded a D.C. Psychological Association Student Research Grant for the project “Co-Development of a Single-Session Intervention Enhanced with mHealth for Preventing Psychological Distress Among NICU Parents of Premature Infants.”
PhD student Taisha Blanc was awarded the Phillip Amsterdam Graduate Student Teaching Award.
Sarah Calabrese received a $17,500 award from the GW University Facilitating Fund for the project “Developing a Culturally Responsive Digital Intervention to Promote Equitable Access to HIV Resources.”
Jody Ganiban and colleagues at the University of Oregon and Pennsylvania State received an NIH competitive renewal award to examine the impacts of environmental exposures (chemical, psychosocial, lifestyle) on children’s physical and mental health outcomes. This project is part of NIH’s Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) initiative, which includes 52,000 infants and children across the U.S. The GW site for ECHO will receive $1.68 million over the next five years.
PhD student Vicky Ho received the Dean’s Graduate Lectureship to develop the undergraduate course “Roots and Resilience: Mental Health and Well-Being in Immigrant Children & Families.”
PhD student David Kalwicz was awarded a $48,974 grant from NIH to study HIV risk messaging and medical mistrust, and the psychosocial and behavioral implications thereof, among Black, Latino/a/e/x and multiracial sexual and gender minorities.
PhD student Lauren Kobylski was awarded a D.C. Psychological Association Student Research Grant for the project “A Mixed-Methods Pilot Study of an Electronic, Self-Guided Safety Planning Intervention for Perinatal Individuals with Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors.”
PhD student Myla Lyons and the Psychology Graduate Association received a grant from GW to set up and administer the Psychology Student Research Supplement, a new department funding mechanism that allows graduate students to apply for small grants to support student-led research.
Lyons was also awarded a D.C. Psychological Association Student Research Grant and a Psi Chi grant for the project “Exploring the Influence of Social Norms and Prototypes on Black Women’s Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) Use Willingness and Intentions.”
Stephen Mitroff and Dwight Kravitz received two grants from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory: $277,456 to study a scalable and adaptive multi-agent framework for human-AI teaming across hierarchies and time horizons; and $252,000 for the project “Everything Counts In Large Amounts: The Power Needed to Delineate the Many Factors that Impact Human Behavior.”
Mitroff was also part of a team that received a five-year award from NIH for the project “Optimizing the Human-Computer Interaction in Pathology: Understanding the Impact of Computer-Aided Diagnosis Tools on Pathologists’ Interpretive Performance.”
Gabriela Rosenblau and her postdoctoral fellow Samantha Yen-Wen Chen were awarded a $11,500 grant from the Simons Foundation to mentor undergraduate student Nicole Treece in the PBS Department through the 2025-2026 Shenoy Undergraduate Research Fellowship in Neuroscience.
Sarah Shomstein received the Psychonomic Society Mid-Career Award.
Ellen Yeung was awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor.
Five PBS PhD students were awarded Walk Dissertation Awards for up to $1,000 to support their dissertation research: Kiara Anese Barnett, Vicky Ho, David Kalwicz, Arianne Malekzadeh and Sanika Paranjape.
Many PBS PhD students successfully defended their dissertations, including: Rebeka Almasi, Maya Cook Alford, Luke Herchenroeder, Jonah Kracke-Bock, Seon (Eric) Lee, Stacy Post, Kantoniony (Kanto) Rabemanjara and Ashley Reed.
Many PBS graduate students published first-authored manuscripts this year, including: Kiara Anese Barnett, Luke Herchenroeder, Vicky Ho, Harini Krishnamurti, Paddy Loftus, Blakely Murphy, Stacy Post, Alana Rule and Lindsey Siff.
The Clinical Psychology PhD Program, led at the time by Director of Clinical Training Sharon Lambert, was reaccredited by the American Psychological Association for another 10 years.
The PBS Department bid farewell to several of its beloved faculty, including Peg Barratt, Lisa Bowleg, George Howe and Paul Poppen. We wish you all the best in retirement!
Alumni Class Notes
- Gabriella Bann, BA ’22, graduated from the MA Program in the Social Sciences with a concentration in Psychology at the University of Chicago, and is now working at the Human Behavioral Pharmacology lab at the University of Chicago.
- Nicole Buckner, BA ’98, is a human resources consultant, working with small organizations to provide out-sourced HR support and guidance on people strategy initiatives.
- Kayla Cholpan, BA ’21, graduated from CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice with a Master of Arts in Forensic Mental Health Counseling. She has received her limited permit in New York State and is now a practicing clinician.
- Jason Comer, BA ’94, is an oncologist and assistant professor at the University of Washington Department of Medicine and Medical Director of the Fred Hutch Cancer Center in Bellevue Washington.
- John Davis, BA ’75, continues to use his brain at age 72, teaching neuropsychology and writing about EEG biofeedback at McMaster University’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences. Professor Lawrence Rothblat taught John to love neuroscience.
- Felicia Goins, BA ’78, a graduate of Howard University College of Dentistry and Children’s Hospital National Medical Center is a practicing Pediatric Dentist in Columbia and Sumter, S.C.
- Roderick Hall, PhD ’94, is in the private practice of clinical psychology in Coronado, California. He is the past president of the San Diego Psychoanalytic Center and current chair of Child, and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Training at the San Diego Psychoanalytic Center.
- Jean LaFauci Schutt, BA ’96, is serving as an associate editor for the Trauma Counseling & Resilience Journal. She recently published a book chapter in The Perfectly Imperfect Family, titled “Navigating the Path to Supporting Indigenous Children.”
- Lee Mann, PhD ’90, retired from NIH in 2020 with nearly 25 years of government service. He is happily retired and travels often, including recent trips to Alaska, Iceland, Israel and Mexico.
- Maxwell McGowen, BA ’11, is a senior business process improvement specialist at National Philanthropic Trust, the largest national sponsor of donor-advised funds in the United States.
- Caitlyn O'Conor, BA ’16, lives in Boston and attended the MGH Institute of Health Professions to become a licensed physician assistant. She currently works in gastroenterology at Tufts Medical Center.
- Samantha Runyon, BA ’16, lives in San Diego working as a corporate event planner for a prominent healthcare staffing agency. She hopes to earn her master’s and become a licensed clinical counselor.
- Natalie Solomon, BA ’25, started law school at UCLA.
- John Venezia, BA ’18, is a licensed clinical social worker in Maryland working on an inpatient psychiatric hospital unit full time and working as an outpatient therapist part time. He primarily works with patients experiencing psychosis and mania.