The University of Delaware’s Francis Alison Society has selected Naomi Samimi-Sadeh, assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences as a recipient of the 2020 Gerard J. Mangone Young Scholar Award.
The award recognizes promising and accomplished young faculty. Samimi-Sadeh was honored in the Natural Sciences and Engineering category.
The recipients are chosen by fellow faculty members who have received the Francis Alison Award, the University's highest competitive faculty honor.
Samimi-Sadeh is a clinical psychologist whose research seeks to understand why people engage in risky, impulsive and self-destructive behavior and how sensitivity and resilience to life stress contribute to such harmful behaviors.
She is especially interested in severe self-regulation disorders and their related public health problems such as suicidal behavior, substance use, violence and criminal behavior.
In nominating Samimi-Sadeh for the Mangone Award, Prof. Tania Roth called her research “original, creative and cutting-edge” and pointed out that her approach and methodologies bridge clinical psychology, behavioral epigenetics and neuroscience. Her work is “innovative, timely and meaningful,” with direct relevance to critical health and social issues, Roth said.
The nomination letter also cited Samimi-Sadeh’s valuable work as a teacher and mentor, noting that her students report finding her classroom exercises engaging and instructive and that her graduate students have published multiple journal articles and have received training grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
Roth praised Samimi-Sadeh’s service to the professional, University and wider communities as well. As an example of public service, she described her work with a new partnership between the psychology department and the U.S. Probation Office in which Samimi-Sadeh is teaching skills-based therapy to a group of participants in an effort to help individuals who are leaving prison re-enter the community successfully.
In summary, Roth wrote, “Her innovative research program, her excellence in classroom teaching and mentoring of the next generation of scientists, and her commitment to community engagement and affecting the well-being of people she serves makes her the type of nominee this award is designed to recognize and encourage.”
Samimi-Sadeh, who earned her doctorate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has published some 60 papers and has received internal and external funding for her research, including an NIMH grant. She has received a number of prestigious early career awards, including the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science, the Early Career Achievement Award from the American Psychological Association and the Career Development Leadership Award from the Anxiety and Depression Association. In 2019, one of her articles was selected as Editor’s Choice for a curated collection of articles in the journal Psychiatric Services.
Excerpted from the article Young Scholars by Ann Manser for UDaily. January 22, 2021
