Department of Psychology Hosted New Summer Research Experience for Undergraduates from Across the U.S.

By: Tiffany Whitfield

During the summer of 2021, six undergraduates from across the United States participated in the Department of Psychology's new Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program, supported by the National Science Foundation. This was the first of its kind REU program for Psychology and participants pursued research vigorously and virtually on zoom.

This 10-week REU program offered students the opportunity to do research in transportation fields. In addition to research, the students were paired with ODU faculty mentors and were given instructions on how to apply for graduate school and learn about other career pathways in Psychology.

Yusuke Yamani, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Psychology (Human Factors) was the principal investigator. Jing Chen, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Psychology was the co-principal investigator and Bryan Porter, Ph.D. associate dean of the Graduate School & Professor was the senior personnel.

The main goals of the Psychology REU program were to engage undergraduates in hands-on research activities in interdisciplinary transportation science, and to enhance their pathways to pursue advanced degrees and careers in transportation research and industry.

"Under the current circumstances, we successfully ran our first REU program this year remotely with six virtual field trips and invited talks, three workshops, and two symposia," said Yamani. "We welcomed six exceptional undergraduate students from across the U.S., and each of them was paired with one faculty mentor."

The six participants currently attend ODU, Virginia Tech, Wichita State University, University of Maryland, University of Wisconsin - Madison and State University of New York - Geneseo.

Each week, the students were required to attend a workshop/virtual tour. "This year, we had speakers from NASA Langley Research Center, NHTSA, VTTI, Volvo, and AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety," said Yamani. Representatives from ODU's Graduate College led a workshop for the cohorts which featured the Departments of Psychology, Cybersecurity, and Chemistry.

"Each student closely worked with their faculty mentor on a specific project they were responsible for and presented their work during the mid-program symposium and the final presentation," said Yamani. The projects they executed varied from direct observation of pedestrian behaviors in Downtown Norfolk, to online experiments on driver behaviors while interacting with partially automated vehicles, to modelling of distracted driving. This wide variety of topics the REU students pursued reflects the cross-disciplinary nature of transportation issues.

The Psychology REU students presented their posters via Zoom for the mid-program and the final presentation symposia along with executive summaries (which are available in MGB 332).

Some of them are already presenting their works at international conferences such as American Psychological Association - Technology, Mind & Society conference in November 2021.

To learn more about ODU's Department of Psychology and Yamani's research in Applied Cognitive Performance Laboratory click here.