2020/2021 IOG Report

Awards and Placements

DeAnnah Byrd, PhD (2017-21) Dr. Byrd has accepted a position as assistant professor in the Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation at Arizona State University. She will also be affiliated with The Center for Innovation in Healthy and Resilient Aging. Her research will continue to investigate the nexus of chronic conditions, chronic stressors, and coping factors on cognition and memory in aging African Americans.

Dr. Byrd was in the first cohort of scholars selected for WSU's Postdoctoral to Faculty Transition program. She was principal investigator on a grant funded by the Michigan Alzheimer's Disease Research Center to study hypertension in African Americans. She also won a highly competitive loan repayment award from the National Institutes of Health.

Kelsey Canada, PhD (2020-present) Dr.Canada was first author of "Modeling longitudinal changes in hippocampal subfields and relations with memory from early- to mid-childhood," in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 48, 100947, 2021. She also organized the inaugural Hippocampal Subfield Group Webinar Series, attracting more than 400 registrants worldwide.

Adit Doza, PhD (2017-19) Dr. Doza has accepted a post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Michigan, working on health economics and aging with former IOG trainee Dr. Elham Mahmoudi, now a U-M assistant professor.

Yi-Ling Hu, PhD (2019-21) Dr. Hu has accepted an assistant professorship in the Department of Occupational Therapy at Chang Gung University, Taiwan. She co-authored eight publications and was first author on two of them. She won 1^st place for her platform presentation at the 2021 WSU Graduate Research Symposium and 1^st place for her poster at WSU Applebaum Research Day, 2020.

Lisa Johnson, PhD (2019-21) is now an assistant professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

Patrick Pruitt, PhD (2018-20) is continuing his postgraduate studies as a research fellow at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland.

Adriana Ruiz Rizzo, PhD (2019-21) Dr. Rizzo is now a research fellow at Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany. She was first author of "Lower-Resolution Retrieval of Scenes in Older Adults with Subjective Cognitive Decline" in the Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 8-2-21. Dr. Rizzo also won 1^st place for her postdoctoral poster at the 2021 WSU Graduate and Postdoctoral Research Symposium.

Mohammad Usama Toseef, PhD (2018-19) is now a Prevention Effectiveness Fellow with the Centers for Disease Control, Denver Public Health.

Qijing Yu, PhD (2015-2021) has leveraged her expertise in data analytics and developmental cognitive neuroscience to become a contractor at Google.

2020/2021 IOG Report