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Welcome to the newsletter of the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences. You have received this as someone who has registered through psych.unimelb.edu.au or as a student or member of staff.
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November 2015

 

Hello MSPS Newsletter,

Welcome to the November edition of the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences newsletter.
 

1. Professor John Trinder celebrated for a lifetime of research on sleep

The work of sleep expert, Professor John Trinder, was celebrated recently at a Festschrift commending his contribution to science and his impact on the lives and careers of his students and colleagues. Current and past PhD students, researchers, colleagues, and domestic and international collaborators convened at Queen’s College, Melbourne to celebrate the career of Professor John Trinder, as he retired from the directorship of the Sleep Laboratory in the School of Psychological Sciences. Professor Trinder’s work in respiratory and cardiovascular function of sleep, child and adolescent mental health, and the importance of sleep on physical and cognitive health, is globally renowned.

The University has recognised Professor Trinder’s contribution to science by granting him Professor Emeritus status taking effect from 1 November, 2015.

To read more on Professor John Trinder's academic achievements click here.


 

2. Other news around the school

MSPS demonstrates ARC Discovery Project success in 2016

Congratulations to those members of staff who have been successful in winning ARC Discovery Projects in the 2016 round announced on the 30th October.

  • Amy Jordan, John Trinder and Christian Nicholas have received funding for a project on neural memory in upper airway dilator muscles.
  •  Stefan Bode and Rob Hester received funding for a project investigating neural mechanisms in change-of-mind decisions and decision errors.
  •  Yoshi Kashima, Garry Robins and David Sewell, along with Orjan Bodin, were successful with their project on collective self-regulation and environmental sustainability.
  •  Yoshi Kashima, Piers Howe and Simon Laham, with three additional collaborators, received funding for a project on the mechanisms underlying cooperation.

In addition to these four projects based at the University of Melbourne, Dan Little is a chief investigator on a funded project at the University of Newcastle on the mathematical modeling of error responses.
 
This outcome is a credit to the School's work and we heartily congratulate everyone involved.

Congratulations Gary Robins

Garry Robins has been awarded the 2016 Simmel Award, the highest research award from the International Network of Social Network Analysis (INSNA). The award is for career-long achievement  and contribution to social network research. He will receive the award and give the keynote address at the International Sunbelt Network Conference to be held in Newport Beach, California, in April 2016.
 
The Simmel Award has a great history at MSPS, having been previously won by Professor Pip Pattison in 2002. Garry and Pip have also twice won ISNA's i2 citation award for articles they have co-authored. This new award is a wonderful recognition of Garry and of the School's tradition of excellence in social network scholarship.
 

3. Recent events

Capstone Poster Presentation Evening

The 2015 Capstone Poster Presentation Event was another wonderful showcase of undergraduate research. Despite the unseasonably cold weather spirits were high as a record 107 posters were displayed. The quality of the work on show and the presentation of the posters themselves continues to rise over the years.

The School would like to thank Judi Humberstone for organising the event and for running the Capstone with her usual enthusiasm, efficiency and careful planning. We also want to acknowledge the hard work by all of the staff who gave capstone lectures, supervised capstone seminars, did behind the scenes administration, and contributed to the very obvious satisfaction with the subject among the students.

A full list of the winning posters can be viewed here.



Miegunyah Public Lecture


The 2016 Miegunyah Fellow public lecture was a great success with more than 400 registrants entertained and informed by distinguished visitor Professor Paul Rozin on the popular topic of food and eating. The event was an excellent opportunity for students to get excited about their field, and it generated very good publicity for the School. The School would like to thank Katherine Johnson, Chris Newton and Rutti Loh for all of their work behind the scenes that ensured the success of the public lecture, which adds to an impressive suite of external relations activities in 2015.

Below are some photos of the event:


 

4. Job, Research and Scholarship Opportunities

Job: Part-time Clinical Research Assistant

The MSPS Clinical and Health Psychology Lab is looking for a part-time (1 day per week) research assistant for a 12 month period under the supervision of Dr Kiropoulos on a range of current research projects.

More information on the role and the selection criteria can be found here.

Enquiries and applications: Dr Litza Kiropoulos (litzak@unimelb.edu.au)
Submissions close: 16th November
 

Job: ORIMA Research seeking Research Assistant (Qualitative) for 2016

As a Research Assistant at ORIMA Research you will have the opportunity work on a wide range of quantitative research projects aimed at developing, evaluating and refining government programs, policies and services. You will also be involved in undertaking research designed to assist organisations improve their performance such as employee engagement. Your key duties will include assisting research consultants to conduct quantitative research consultancies by undertaking data processing and data file preparation and assisting in analysing and interpreting results by generating charts and descriptive statistics.

More information available via careersonline.unimelb.edu.au (requires login)

Enquiries and applications: hr@orima.com
Submissions close: 13th November 2015
 

Job: Research Assistant required at Mindful centre in Travancore (Flemington)

A research assistant is required to assist with the Tuning in to Toddlers (TOTS) parenting program. This Rotary Health funded randomised controlled study evaluates the new parenting program “Tuning in to Toddlers”. The intervention aims to improve parents’ responses to children’s emotions and prevent the onset of social, emotional and behavioural difficulties in young children. The research assistant will be involved in recruitment of participants, data collection, observation assessments,  coding of data and data entry into SPSS.

A minimum Honours degree in Psychology, or other disciple with skills in the research methodology is required. Ideally the incumbent will be interested in working with parents and young children as well as have an interest in working with emotions in family relationships. The position is located at the Mindful centre in Travancore (Flemington).

Enquiries and applications: Dr Sophie Havinghurst (sophie.h@unimelb.edu.au)
Submissions close: 13th November 2015
 

Opportunity: Join the Farrago team in 2016

Farrago is recruiting subeditors, columnists, campus reporters, graphics contributors, radio team members, radio presenters, video team members, social media officers and web officers for 2016. If any of those titles pique your interest, get your little heart going or make you a bit hot under the collar, chuck us an email!
 
More information: https://www.tinyurl.com/farrago2016
Enquiries: farragomedia2016@gmail.com
Submission deadline: stroke of midnight, Sunday 22 November 2015. Don’t get turned into a pumpkin!
 

Research: Call for study participants

Study 1: Finding the Human Element in Rhythm

Rhythm connects people physically, emotionally, intellectually and even spiritually. People may wonder: What makes a rhythm enjoyable? How good is my rhythm skill? Introducing the new Rhythm Tracker program, which will help answer these questions, and more! Professional percussionist, James Richmond (ex Melbourne Symphony Orchestra), has teamed up with Professors Neil McLachlan and Sarah Wilson to launch a website that will collect data about how people from all over the world play rhythms. Anyone can login to the website and play along with rhythms that are targeted to their skill level. The website gives feedback on their accuracy and allows people to increase the difficulty level as they improve. Participants will also be asked some questions about their cultural and musical background.

Participate online: www.rhythmtracker.sollysweb.com
Enquiries: jameshr@student.unimelb.edu.au
HREC: 1033641.1

Do you know of an opportunity that can be included in our next Newsletter? if so please let us know via email.

5. Recent publications and conference presentations

Decision Neuroscience Lab

Simmank J, Murawski C, Bode S, Horstmann A (2015). Incidental rewarding cues influence financial decisions in people with obesity. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 9, 278.
 

Other Publications

Buckley, R.F., Saling, M.M. Ellis, K., Rowe, C.C., Maruff, P., Macaulay, S.L., Martins, R., Masters, C.L., Savage, G., Rainey-Smith, S.R., Rembach, A., Ames, D. Self and informant memory concerns align in healthy memory complainers and in early stages of mild cognitive impairment but separate with increasing cognitive impairment. (2015) Accepted at Age and Ageing

Buckley, R.F., Saling, M.M., Frommann, I., Wolfsgruber, S., Wagner, M. Subjective cognitive decline from a phenomenological perspective: a review of the qualitative literature. (2015) Accepted at Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Chanen, A., Jackson, H., Cotton, S. M., Gleeson, J., Davey, C. G., Betts, J., Reid, S, Thompson, K. and McCutcheon, L. (2015). Comparing three forms of early intervention for youth with borderline personality disorder (the MOBY study): study protocol for a randomised controlled trial. Trials, 1–10.  http://doi.org/10.1186/s13063-015-1001-x   
 

Conference Presentations:

Dr Stefan Bode gave presentations at the international Pattern Recognition in Neuroimaging Workshop, hosted by the Freie University Berlin, Germany, on the application of multivariate analysis of event-related potentials (1st September 2015).

Dr Stefan Bode gave a full-day workshop entitled An Introduction to Multivariate Pattern Analysis, hosted by the University of Cologne, Germany, covering the application of multivariate analysis of event-related potentials and functional magnetic resonance imaging data (7th September 2015).

Dr Daniel Little presented a the VicHealth Public Jury on Obesity, providing an expert’s perspective about the role of habits, automatic behaviour, and cue-based learning on eating and obesity. More information on this event can be found here and in a post event write-up available here.

Recent publications can also be found on academics' personal web pages. For a historic list of all publications, please refer to our Research Reports.    

6. Occupational Health & Safety (OHS) update

Do You Remember the Incident Reporting Process?

Supervisors! Are you going on leave? Have you informed your team members who will be your delegate in your absence? This will ensure that any incident is notified to the appropriate person and recorded into Themis as well as being acknowledged allowing the workflow to proceed to the Faculty OHS Team for further reporting/investigation if required. For more information please read the following Safety Bulletin.
 
Remember some incidents may require medical attention followed by a work cover claim, which is required to be processed within a certain time frame – click here for more information.

In this issue:

 

Meet our students

Hayley Jach (a MSPS Honours student) has written an excellent post titled "Music, neuroplasticity and echoes in the brain" on her blog Curious Notes. This post was based off coursework in the Behavioural Neuroscience elective. Read the full post here.

Jessie Sun has also been busy on her Mindful Psych blog with a post aimed at answering frequently asked questions about the phenomenon that people (including introverts) enjoy acting extroverted. Read the full post here.
 

In the Media

Dr Rachel Buckley was recently featured on Radio National's Big Ideas program for her research into memory concerns in dementia. Find the podcast of her interview by visiting go.unimelb.edu.au/65ra.

The Decision Neuroscience Lab was featured on The Guardian and in the FBE Exchange magazine based on their research into how financial decisions are tied to our biological makeup.
 

MDHS Research Notices

Stay informed about the latest funding and awards, scholarships, events, and training opportunities via the MDHS Research Notices. (University IT username and password required)

OH&S News

» OHS Newsletter
» Current Safety Alerts
» Incident Reporting Process

 

New staff or PhD student?

Check the links below for information about your OH&S roles and responsibilities:
» Mandatory OH&S Training (Supervisors)
» Mandatory OH&S Training (Non-Supervisors)
 

OH&S Representative for MSPS

Name: Swaved Marcinski
Direct phone: 834 48841
Email: swaved.marcinski@unimelb.edu.au
Availability: Level 12, Rm 1209, Redmond Barry Building (Mon-Tues)

Missed a Newsletter?

Previous editions of the newsletter may be viewed online.
» October 2015
» September 2015
» August 2015
» Historical Archive

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