Research Opportunities / Affiliated & Visiting Scientists

See the end of this section for the names of faculty whose research you can learn more about.

Getting Involved in Research with Hunter Psychology Faculty

Hunter Psychology Department faculty are actively involved in research involving human participants and a wide variety of animal species. Whether you are a graduate student or an undergraduate, being involved in original research with a faculty member and other students is one of the most interesting and valuable experiences you can have. You can volunteer to work on faculty research. You can also receive course credit via independent research courses.

Here are some of the benefits of getting involved in research.

  • You get hands-on experience in thinking like a psychologist: developing and testing hypotheses, testing and observing research participants (whether animal or human), refining methods, analyzing data, and understanding the implications of the data.
  • You learn what is behind the experiments that you read about in your courses, putting you in a better position to understand and critique those articles.
  • You enrich your classroom knowledge by in-depth and detailed understanding of a particular topic in psychology.
  • You learn what kinds of problems arise in research and how to go about solving those problems.
  • You acquire a variety of skills that are useful for approaching any issue systematically. Those skills help you figure out what kinds of questions to ask and where to look for answers.
  • You get to know a professor better than you can within the context of a course, and that professor gets to know you better.
  • Your research experience helps you do further work in psychology and helps you find jobs. Employers want to hire people who have the skills that research develops.

Students are encouraged to engage in research under faculty supervision in areas such as (1) applied and evaluative psychology; (2) social, cognitive, and developmental psychology; (3) biopsychology and comparative psychology. Facilities include specialized equipment for studies on human and animal physiology, speech analysis, human and animal learning, and developmental and social psychology. Students have access to the department's microcomputers and the college's academic computing services. In addition to conducting research in their laboratories at the college, many faculty members have affiliations with other institutions, including the American Museum of Natural History, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Rehabilitation Research Institute of the International Center for the Disabled, the New York State Psychiatric Institute, the Rockefeller University, the New York University Medical Center, and the New York University Center for Neural Science.

Research is work! Depending on whose research project you join, you will be expected to spend anywhere from 9-15 hours a week working on the project and doing background reading for the project. It's important to establish ahead of time, with your research sponsor, how many hours per week you will be committing to the project, what work you will do, and what final product you will produce.

Be sure to read each faculty member's description of his or her project carefully. That way you will know whether you have the background and interests that are appropriate for the project; you will also find out what your responsibilities would be and what you would learn from being part of the research project.

  • Prof. Christopher B. Braun: Sensory Neuroethology, especially audition and electroreception in fishes; Multisensory integration; Evolution of the vertbrate brain and sense organs
  • Prof. Sheila Chase: Comparative cognition, memory and decision processes in humans and other animals; psychophysics; perception; computer modeling
  • Prof. Martin Chodorow: Implicit processes in memory and learning; gender differences in mathematics and spatial ability
  • Prof. Tracy Dennis: Clinical and Developmental Psychology: Emotion regulation, motivation, developmental psychopathology, cultural and contextual influences on self development and social relationships
  • Prof. James Gordon: We are interested in the processing of color and form information by the visual system.
  • Prof. Rebecca Farmer Huselid: Effects of gender roles and ethnic identity on health and academic achievement; effects of race, gender, and acculturation on stress, psychological adjustment and achievement
  • Prof. Regina Miranda: Clinical, Social Cognition, Adolescent Depression and Suicide. Our research seeks to examine social-cognitive processes associated with the onset, maintenance, and exacerbation of depression, in addition to processes associated with suicidal thinking and behavior.
  • Prof. Jeffrey Parsons: Health behaviors (e.g., HIV prevention, HIV medication adherence, sexual behavior, substance use/abuse); GLBTQ issues; interventions designed to change sexual/drug using behaviors among various populations; club drug use (ecstasy, cocaine, methamphetamine)
  • Prof. Sandeep Prasada: Cognitive and developmental psychology: Conceptual & lexical representation in mind and brain, language acquisition
  • Prof. Vita C. Rabinowitz: Gender issues in health research; methodological issues in the study of gender; gender equity in the workplace; gender and advancement in science and academia
  • Prof. Diana Reiss: Comparative cognition, animal behavior and communication; marine mammal cognition and communication; vocal learning; evolution of intelligence; bioacoustics; animal enrichment and animal welfare in zoos and aquariums
  • Prof. Michael Siller: Development of early social cognition and language; parent-child communication; children with autism
  • Prof. Tricia Striano: Infant development, autism, social cognition
  • Prof. Joyce Slochower: Psychoanalysis: Relational theory; Winnicott; holding; interiority; psychoanalytic writing; ethics
  • Prof. Virginia Valian: First and second language acquisition; sex differences in math; gender and advancement in science
  • Prof. Jason Young: Social Psychology: The study of attitudes and persuasion; media effects and political attitudes; safer sex advertising and behavior; the influence of evolution on social behavior
  • Prof. H. Philip Zeigler: Neuroethology of movement; development of brain mechanisms mediating “active touch” in rodents; sensory processing and motor control

Affiliated & Visiting Scientists - Spring 2007

Joseph C.E. Barber, Ph.D.
Affiliated Scientist
Wildlife Conservation Society
University of Oxford, UK
Email: jbarber@wcs.org
Research: Applied animal welfare, evaluation and documentation of techniques of animal care
Research Lab: http://maxweber.hunter.cuny.edu/psych/faculty/labs/barber.htm

Nancy Clum, Ph.D.,
Assistant Curator, Ornithology
Wildlife Conservation Society
Cornell University
E-mail: nclum@wcs.org

Patricia D. Cole, Ph.D., Dalhousie University
Affiliated Scientist
Prospect Park Zoo
Email: pcole@wcs.org
Research: Animal learning, cognition and behavior
Research Lab: http://maxweber.hunter.cuny.edu/psych/faculty/labs/cole.htm

Donald E. Moore, Ph.D., SUNY
Affiliated Scientist
Associate Director National Zoo
Email: moorede@si.edu
Research: Behavioral ecology of verebrates in wild; behavioral enrichment effects on behavior of vertebrates in captivity
Research Lab: http://maxweber.hunter.cuny.edu/psych/faculty/labs/moore.htm

David M. Powell, Ph.D.
Affiliated Scientist
Wildlife Conservation Society / Bronx Zoo
Email: dpowell@wcs.org
Research Lab: http://maxweber.hunter.cuny.edu/psych/faculty/labs/powell.htm

Alexandra Horowitz, Ph.D.
Lecturer
E-mail: ahorowit@crl.ucsd.edu

Sonia Ragir
Professor, College of Staten Island
E-mail: soniaragir@gmail.com

Kirsten Siex, Ph.D., Duke University
Assistant Director, Africa Program, Wildlife Conservation Society
E-mail: ksiex@wcs.org

Scott Silver, Ph.D., Fordham University
Associate Director and Curator, Queens Zoo
Wildlife Conservation Society
E-mail: ssilver@wcs.org

Ethel Tobach, Ph.D., New York University
Curator, American Museum of Natural History
E-Mail: tobach@amnh.org
Research: Comparative psychology - development and evolution of the activity of all species, including humans, zoo research, relation of people and animals.

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