LRDC News and Awards

Alexandra Silver (Melissa Libertus' mentee) has won a 2022-2023 FABBS Doctoral Dissertation Research Excellence Award. This is awarded to only 2-5 students in the country each year, and is “to acknowledge and honor graduate student scientists who have conducted doctoral dissertation research of superior scientific quality and broader societal impacts."   

May 8, 2023

Marc Coutanche has received a secondary appointment in the Department of Neuroscience.   

May 8, 2023

Omid Fotuhi, LRDC Research Associate, was featured in the May 4 Science Magazine for his and colleagues' research "Where and with whom does a brief social-belonging intervention promote progress in college?" in Science. The Stanford News also released a story on the research.    View

May 22, 2023

Kudos to recipients of the Inaugural Joint School of Education-LRDC Faculty Research Awards "Studying the Neural Basis of Braille Literacy and Numeracy" Julie Fiez, Psychology, LRDC; and Tessa McCarthy and Frances Mary D'Andrea, School of Education. "Race, Class, and Context: Exploring Intersectional Influences on Child and Adolescent Health" Daphne Henry, Psychology, LRDC; and Sirry Alang and Sharon Ross, School of Education.   

May 1, 2023

Kudos to recipients of the LRDC 2023 Internal Award for "Using ChatGPT to Analyze Classroom Discussions" Rip Correnti, (PI) School of Education, LRDC; Diane Litman, Computer Science, LRDC; Lindsay Clare Matsumura, School of Education and LRDC Associate Director of Education Research and Practice; and Amanda Godley, Vice Provost for Graduate Studies.   

May 1, 2023

Kudos to Marc Coutanche and the students enrolled in a new learning sciences course who presented their work at the inaugural Learning Sciences Poster Session on April 26.   

May 1, 2023

Marc Coutanche was featured in the Pittwire article "Ace Finals Using These Memory Tricks." Pittwire re-published this April 2022 article in its this April 2023 edition.    View

April 24, 2023

Jen Iriti has been appointed Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research Inclusion and Outreach Strategy. Jen will help large multidisciplinary research proposal teams (potentially multi-university) design their diversity, equity, inclusion, outreach and workforce development components.    View

April 17, 2023

Many LRDC faculty were featured in an article by the University Times titled "Inside … LRDC’s space is an abundance of light and collaboration."    View

April 17, 2023

LRDC members of the University Senate’s Equity, Inclusion, and Anti-Discrimination Advocacy Committee (EIADAC) Natasha Tocowicz and Kelly Tatone wrote a letter to the editor in the University Times, titled "Letter to the editor: EIADAC says Pitt must reaffirm its support for LGBTQIA+ students through action."    View

April 17, 2023

Kudos to the recipients of the Spring 2023 Council Award: Alex Silver, Rebecca McGregor, (Caroline) Xueying Ren, Shirley Duong, Lorraine Blatt, and Isabella Kahhale.   

April 3, 2023

LRDC Research Scientist and Katz School of Business Professor Frits Pil was recognized at the 2023 Honors Convocation. Frits was named a Distinguished Service Professor. Congrats!   

March 20, 2023

LRDC Research Scientist Melissa Libertus and Board of Visitors member Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Temple University, were quoted in the March 7 New York Post.    View

March 13, 2023

Kudos to Michelene T.H. Chi, former LRDC Senior Scientist and current professor, Mary Lou Fulton Teacher's College, Arizona State University, for receiving a Distinguished Scientific Award for the Applications of Psychology from the American Psychological Association.    View

February 6, 2023

Diana Leyva was awarded a new, two-year, $178K grant by the Brady Education Foundation for "Recipe for Success (RFS): Improving Literacy and Diet in Latino Preschoolers Through Peer Support." The Co-PIs are Sharon Ross at the School of Education and Patricia Documet at the School of Public Health.   

January 30, 2023

LRDC Post-Doc Tessa Benson-Greenwald has received a Grant-In-Aid from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) for "Valuing Perspectives and Promoting Inclusion: The Impact of valuing subjectivity in STEM contexts for underrepresented groups." Congrats Tessa!   

January 17, 2023

LRDC Research Associate Omid Fotuhi was featured in a January 17 Pittwire article "Struggling with your New Year’s resolutions? There’s still hope, say these Pitt experts."    View

January 23, 2023

LRDC Research Scientist Melissa Libertus was featured in January 6 , 2023, Daily UK News.    View

January 9, 2023

LRDC Research Scientist Brian Galla's recent study about high-stakes testing was featured in the December 18, 2022, Pittsburgh Parent.    View

January 9, 2023

Ming-Te Wang has been recognized as a highly cited researcher in the category of Psychiatry and Psychology! Wang was recognized by Clarivate for his research influence, demonstrated by the production of multiple highly cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for his field and year in the Web of Science™    View

November 21, 2022

Kudos to Nikki Lobczowski who has accepted an Assistant Professor position in the Learning Sciences Program, Department of Education and Counselling, of McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Nikki is currently a Postdoctoral fellow working with Tim Nokes-Malach and Erin Walker. She will begin teaching at McGill in January 2023.   

November 14, 2022

Jamie Hanson was featured in the November 2022 LRDC Research News for receiving an Excellence in Graduate Mentoring Award.    View

November 8, 2022

Ming-Te Wang was featured in the November 2022 Research News. His co-led Just Discipline Project expands to 12 more local schools in 2022 and another eight in 2023, with grants from the U.S. Department of Education, the Institute for Educational Science, The Heinz Endowments, and Pittsburgh's Children’s Hospital.    View

November 8, 2022

LRDC Post Doc Luis Pérez Cortés was featured in the November 2022 LRDC Research News for his guest appearance on a podcast, "Just an Hour," sponsored by Arizona State University's Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College.    View

November 8, 2022

Angela Stewart was featured in the University Times article, "New to Pitt: SCI Professor focuses on underserved communities."    View

November 7, 2022

Jamie Hanson was recently awarded a graduate mentoring award from the Dietrich School and recognized in a November 2 award ceremony.    View

November 7, 2022

Kudos to LRDC Center Associate Chandrelekha Singh, Distinguished Professor in Physics and Astronomy, special assistant to the provost for quantum education! Singh received the 2022 Dwight Nicholson Medal for Outreach, which recognizes the humanitarian aspect of physics and physicists created through public lectures and public media, teaching, research, or science related activities.    View

November 7, 2022

Listen to Luis Perez Cortes, LRDC Post Doc, on "Just an Hour: Exploring the meaning of transdisciplinary scholarship." ASU Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College.    View

October 24, 2022

Kudos to Diane Litman and co-authors Zhexiong Liu, Meiqi Guo, and Yue Dai who received Best Paper Award for "ImageArg: A Multi-modal Tweet Dataset for Image Persuasiveness Mining," at the 9th Workshop on Argument Mining, COLING, South Korea 2022.    View

October 24, 2022

Chandralekha Singh, Distinguished Professor in Physics and Astronomy, special assistant to the provost for quantum education, and LRDC Center Associate, was honored by the American Physical Society. Read about the honor in the October 20 Pittwire article.    View

October 24, 2022