Early Career Academics of MSPS featuring short talks from Dr. Natalia Egorova Brumley, Dr. Vanessa Ferdinand, Dr. Kelly Kirkland, and Dr. Trevor Steward
The first Semester 2 Colloquium event featured a series of short talks from Dr. Natalia Egorova Brumley, Dr. Vanessa Ferdinand, Dr. Kelly Kirkland, and Dr. Trevor Steward
This event featured four 10-minute talks from early career academics working across different hubs in the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences.
Below are talk titles and short bios for each of our speakers:
Dr. Natalia Egorova Brumley
Title: Continued white matter fibre degeneration over 3 years after ischemic stroke
Bio: Natalia Egorova-Brumley is a Senior Research Fellow currently supported by the Australian Research Council DECRA fellowship. She integrates cognitive and clinical neuroimaging lines of research as the head of the Pain and Cognition Neuroimaging Lab at the MSPS, and an Honorary Fellow at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health.
Dr. Kelly Kirkland
Title: The erosion of the middle class
Bio: Kelly Kirkland completed her PhD at the University of Queensland in 2020 where she explored the effect of economic inequality on prosocial behaviour in adults and children. She is now a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working with Professor Brock Bastian, exploring the factors that promote and inhibit eco-friendly action.
Dr. Trevor Steward
Title: A thalamo-centric neural signature for restructuring negative self-beliefs
Bio: Trevor Steward is a NHRMC/MRFF Fellow at the University of Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences. His research focuses on using ultra high-field 7T MRI technology to understand how subcortical regions of the brain contribute to common symptoms found across psychiatric disorders. Although most of his research to date has examined the neuropsychopathology of eating disorders, he also conducted studies on gambling disorder, PTSD, and obesity. His aim is to leverage neuroimaging tools to inform brain-based treatments and to predict individual clinical outcomes.
Dr. Vanessa Ferdinand
Title: The dynamics and mechanics of cultural evolution
Bio: Vanessa is a cognitive scientist who researches cultural evolution and the information processing capabilities of adaptive systems, such as learning and evolution. Vanessa obtained their PhD in Language Evolution from the University of Edinburgh, took up an Omidyar Fellowship in Complex Systems Science at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, USA, and currently holds a Research Fellowship in Computational Cognitive Science at the University of Melbourne.
Please see the event recording below.
MSPS Colloquium: Early Career Academics of MSPS from MSPS | Unimelb on Vimeo.