May 15, 2018 | OBSSR Director’s Webinar Presents: Linda K. Larkey, Ph.D., CRTT on Biopsychosocial effects of Meditative Movement (Qigong/Tai Chi) on breast cancer survivor’s fatigue and other symptoms.

Time: 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. (ET)

Register: Register for this online only event.

 

Linda K. Larkey, Ph.D., CRTT, has a notable funded research record in multiple intervention approaches to promote cancer screenings in multiple clinic and community settings. Her more recently NIH-funded projects explore the biopsychosocial effects of Tai Chi Easy/Qigong on breast cancer survivor’s fatigue, cognitive function and other symptoms. Biomarker assessments include cortisol, inflammatory cytokines complemented with self-report and objective performance and cognitive function measures. Dr. Larkey’s more recent and current work nicely models OBSSR-desired grantspersonship and researcher behavior. Larkey is professor in Arizona State University’s College of Nursing and Health Innovation and adjunct faculty with Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale, AZ. Dr. Larkey will review the broader evidence (from her own work and others’) on Meditative Movement (MM) effects on cancer survivorship, supporting the goals of her research underway in breast cancer survivors. Extended models proposing various biomolecular and neurophysiological markers as mechanisms of effects on physical and emotional symptoms, cognitive function and body composition outcomes will be discussed.

 

 

April 23rd, 2018 | Alia Crum, PhD Presents: Nudging Mindset: Improving Health and Motivating Healthy Behaviors

Dr. Alia Crum is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Stanford University.  She received her PhD from Yale University and BA degree from Harvard University.  Dr. Crum’s research focuses on how changes in subjective mindsets—the lenses through which information is perceived, organized, and interpreted—can alter objective reality through behavioral, psychological, and physiological mechanisms.  Her work is, in part, inspired by research on the placebo effect, a robust demonstration of the ability of the mindset to elicit healing properties in the body.  She is interested in understanding how mindsets affect important outcomes outside the realm of medicine, in domains such as exercise, diet and stress.  More specifically, Dr. Crum aims to understand how mindsets can be consciously and deliberately changed through intervention to affect physiological and psychological well-beings.  To date, her research has won several awards including the NIH New Innovator Award and the Thomas Temple Hoopes Prize.  In addition to her academic research and teaching, Dr. Crum has worked as a clinical psychologist for the VA healthcare system and an organizational trainer and consultant, creating, delivering, and evaluating workshops on mindset change and stress management for organizations including UBS, Colgate Palmolive and the United States Navy.

 

March 27th, 2018 | Angela Duckworth, PhD Presents: Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

Angela Duckworth is the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the Founder and CEO of the Character Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance the science and practice of character development. Angela studies grit and self-control, two attributes that are distinct from IQ and yet powerfully predict success and well-being. A 2013 MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, Angela has advised the White House, the World Bank, NBA and NFL teams, and Fortune 500 CEOs. Currently, she serves as a Faculty Director for Wharton People Analytics, an initiative that helps organizations adopt the latest insights from social science research. Prior to her career in research, Angela founded a summer school for low-income children that was profiled as a Harvard Kennedy School case study and, in 2012, celebrated its twentieth anniversary. She has also been a McKinsey management consultant and a math and science teacher in the public schools of New York City, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. Angela completed her undergraduate degree in Advanced Studies Neurobiology at Harvard, graduating magna cum laude. With the support of a Marshall Scholarship, she completed an MSc with Distinction in Neuroscience from Oxford University. She completed her PhD in Psychology as a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Angela has received numerous awards for her contributions to K–12 education, including a Beyond Z Award from the KIPP Foundation. Her first book, GRIT: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, debuted May 3, 2016 as an immediate New York Times best seller.

 

November 28th, 2017 | Tessa West, PhD Presents: How Subtle Cues of Anxiety Shape Interracial Interactions

Tessa West, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at New York University. She has been at NYU since earning her PhD in Social Psychology at University of Connecticut in 2008. Her research focuses on understanding the nature and dynamics of human perception, in particular how we perceive others in cross-race interactions. Tessa’s multi-method approach to studying dyadic- and group-level interactions balances real-world validity with the control of experimental settings.

Tuesday, November 28th, 2017
2:00-3:00pm (EST)

 

Dr. Santosh Kumar Presents: Sensor-triggered Mobile Interventions Using Mobile Sensor Data-to-Knowledge (MD2K)

Monday, September 25th, 2017

2:00-3:00pm (EST)

Santosh Kumar, Ph.D. is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Memphis where he holds the Lilian & Morrie Moss Chair of Excellence. His research focuses on mobile health (or mHealth). He and his student have developed computational models to infer human health and behavior such as stress, conversation, smoking, craving, and cocaine use from wearable sensor data. He leads several large multidisciplinary projects in mHealth funded by National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), and IARPA. He currently leads NIH-funded national Center of Excellence on Mobile Sensor Data-to-Knowledge (MD2K) that involves over 20 scientists in computing, engineering, behavioral science, and medicine from 12 universities. MD2K has developed and released open- source software platforms (mCerebrum and Cerebral Cortex) to support discovery and validation of new digital mHealth biomarkers and sensor-triggered interventions. Santosh was named one of America’s “Ten Most Brilliant Scientists Under The Age of 38” by Popular Science in 2010. In 2015, he was named Tennessee’s “First Chair of Excellence in Computer Science”.

 

Dr. Douglas S. Mennin, PhD, Presents: Addressing the Complexity of Refractory Conditions with Mechanism-Targeted Psychosocial Intervention

Monday, May 22, 2017

2:00-3:00 pm (EST)

Traditional empirically based psychosocial treatments have been associated with considerable efficacy, especially with anxiety- and mood-related outcomes. However, sizable subgroups of individuals remain refractory to improvement. Recent advances in classification, experimental therapeutics, and precision medicine offer promise for isolating mechanisms common to many pathological conditions and developing targeted interventions, as a result. However, complex conditions with multiple overlaying dysfunctions may require multi-componential treatments to produce clinically significant and pervasive outcomes. Emotion Regulation Therapy (ERT) is an affect science based, mechanism-targeted, psychosocial intervention for chronic anxiety and mood disorders characterized by high levels of transdiagnostic negative self-referencing processes (i.e., worry, rumination, self-criticism), which are associated with poor outcome. Efficacy and preliminary mechanism data for ERT will be presented with the goal of illustrating the need for both inductive (e.g., experimental therapeutics) and deductive (i.e., honed psychosocial treatment) approaches to targeting mechanisms and improving clinical outcomes.

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