Lauren K. White, who earned her doctorate from the University of Maryland College of Education in 2013, has been named a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science.
The organization bestows its Rising Star designation upon early-career psychological scientists who have completed their doctorates, recognizing “researchers whose innovative work has already advanced the field and signals great potential for their continued contributions,” according to the APS.
Currently, Dr. White is a research associate at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Before that, she completed a three-year postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Mental Health, Section on Developmental and Affective Neuroscience.
Dr. White’s research bridges the areas of developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience to investigate the cognitive processes that shape emotional development, using multiple levels of analyses (i.e., behavior, EEG, fMRI) to help characterize how different cognitive processes contribute to normal and abnormal developmental variation in fear and anxiety. Her more recent research has focused on the cognitive process of attention, examining how the type of information children absorb and their ability to flexibly shift their attention influences their risk of developing anxiety.
During her time at Maryland, Dr. White worked under the supervision of Dr. Nathan Fox, a Distinguished University Professor and a faculty member in the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology.
“My time at Maryland was essential in shaping who I am as a researcher today,” Dr. White said. “Not only did I learn the fundamental skills of being a scientist, but through my work with Nathan I learned to think carefully about research problems and learned the benefits of approaching a research question from multiple angles, using multiple tools of analysis.”
Dr. Fox also expressed his support for Dr. White’s accomplishments.
“The Association for Psychological Science is the premier scientific organization in the United States for experimental psychology,” Dr. Fox said. “This is quite an honor and reflects not only the training that these individuals have had but also their own academic success and the judgement of the scientific community that they are on their way to being stars in their own right.”
