By Wang Richu, Office of Academic Administration, Institute of Psychology, CAS
On 10th of September, a group of researchers from the department of psychology, University of Washington, visited the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The numbers included Professor Jane Simoni, Associate Professor Jessica Sommerville, Assistant Professor Brian Flaherty, and Assistant Janxin Leu. Although there were some individual contacts prior to the group visiting imitative from University of University, this was the first time of formal contact between the two institutions at organizational level. Thus, this visit was regarded as ‘ice-breaking’ trip, to fulfill the purpose of building a bridge and establishing foundation of future academic collaborations. Professor Sun Xianghong, deputy director of the institute, Professor Zhu Liqi, Associate Professor Gao Wenbin, Associate Professor Wang Li, and officer from the academic administration department attended the meeting.
Founded in 1861, University of Washington was one of the first state-supported universities in United States. University of Washington was ranked internationally 16th, national 11th in the latest international university ranking. The department of psychology is the largest department in College of Arts and Sciences, from which over 400 bachelor degrees and 30 graduate degrees awarded annually. The department currently comprises over 60 faculty members within eight research areas, including animal behavior, behavioral neurosciences, clinical psychology, child clinical, cognition and perception, developmental psychology, social and personality, and quantitative psychology. The department of psychology has a strong background in research, and its graduate program was ranked 12th in a recent US national survey. Around specific issues, research in the department of psychology is organized into five interdisciplinary research initiatives, including addictive behavior, child and family well-being, cognition, brain and behavior, global issues in psychology, etc.
An introductory meeting was held in the morning. Professor Sun first introduced the Institute of Psychology, CAS. The guests were impressed by the history, organization, and facilities of the institute, especially the rapid development in both grant-funding and publications during the past few years. The guests then introduced Department of Psychology, Washington, with the emphasis on the research capability in the department. Later, the two party exchanged opinions on common interests, especially discussed future possibilities and perspectives on international collaborations.
After the morning meeting, Professor Simoni gave a talk on research methods in the area of clinical health psychology in the afternoon, titled “Health Psychology Research Methods: Challenges and Examples from the United States”. In the talk, she introduced how to conducting clinical researches using her own researches as example. She also discussed about “empirical-support” debate in American, and how the government and institutions support and administrate research and treatment in this area. The talk was hosted by Professor Sun Xianghong. Professor Jane Simoni is a clinical health psychologist, and research focuses on disease prevention and health promotion among stigmatized populations, specifically people living with HIV. She has engaged in a series of government funded projects to develop and evaluate behavioral interventions, and also collaborated with officials at China CDC and Ditan Hospital in Beijing.
Meanwhile, others professors from the UoW were paired with researchers from the IPCAS to engaging a more thorough discussion on their research interests. Dr. Sommerville was invited by Professor Zhu Liqing, with whom she shared similar research interests on development of social cognition and reasoning among infants and children. Dr. Janxin Leu and her doctoral student joined the group of Dr. Gao Wenbin, discussed on their own study on mental health of immigrants and rural to urban migrants from the view of social psychology. Dr. Brian Flaherty, a psychometrician, introduced his on-going study on applying latent statistical model to categorize tobacco-users, to researchers and students from group of psychological assessment and intervention. In turn, Dr. Wang Li and Dr. Zhou Mingjie introduced their quantitative work on PTSD studies, and sub-health studies in Chinese population.
In the meetings, Professor Sun Xionghong, on behalf of Institute of Psychology CAS, and Professor Jane Simoni, on behalf of University of Washington exchanged gifts. On the occasion of China’s Teacher’s Day, we also celebrates the honors to the professors from both sides. Due to the similar research structure, the two sides had a bright future in future collaborations in many areas. The host and guests also expressed ideas on improving mutual communication, and promoting collaboration through academic visits, scholar/student exchanges, collaborative research, conjoint application of grant-projects and other possible ways.
