Program Overview

Department of Psychology

The Department of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University is part of the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. The department collaborates with various other departments and programs across the university, including the Neuroscience Institute, the Center for Brain Imaging, the Pittsburgh Science Learning Center, and the Social and Decision Sciences Department.

Psychology Ph.D. Program

The goal of the Psychology Ph.D. Program is to train individuals in the areas of cognitive, developmental, and social/personality and health psychology.

Faculty

The following faculty members routinely train Psychology Ph.D. students:

• John Anderson: Richard King Mellon University Professor of Psychology and Computer Science, studying the sequential structure of complex tasks using neural imaging and machine learning techniques.
• Marlene Behrmann: Thomas S. Baker University Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, researching the psychological and neural bases of visual cognition.
• Jessica Cantlon: Ronald J. and Mary Ann Zdrojkowski Associate Professor of Developmental Neuroscience/Psychology, investigating the developmental, evolutionary, and cultural origins of logic and mathematics.
• Sharon Carver: Director, Children's School and Professor of Psychology (Teaching), utilizing theories and research in the learning sciences to improve education.
• Gretchen Chapman: Professor of Social and Decision Sciences and Professor of Psychology (Courtesy), combining judgment and decision making with health psychology to facilitate healthy and prosocial behavior.
• Sheldon Cohen: Robert E. Doherty Professor of Psychology and University Professor, focusing on the roles of stress and social support systems in health and well-being.
• Chante Cox-Boyd: Associate Professor of Psychology (Teaching), interested in the judgments people make of others and how these judgments contribute to social inequality.
• David Creswell: Professor of Psychology, studying stress and resilience processes.
• Kasey Creswell: Associate Professor of Psychology, understanding the mechanisms underlying the development and maintenance of addiction.
• Brooke Feeney: Professor of Psychology, addressing how close relationships facilitate or hinder human thriving.
• Anna Fisher: Associate Professor of Psychology, studying the development of attention regulation and higher-order cognition.
• Vicki Helgeson: Director of Graduate Studies and Professor of Psychology, researching how people adjust to chronic illness.
• Laurie Heller: Professor of Psychology (Teaching), examining the human ability to use sound to understand environmental events.
• Marcel Just: D.O. Hebb University Professor of Psychology, using fMRI to determine how concepts and knowledge structures are neurally represented.
• Roberta Klatzky: Charles J. Queenan, Jr. University Professor of Psychology and Human-Computer Interaction, studying how humans form perceptual representations in multiple sensory modalities.
• Brian MacWhinney: Teresa Heinz Professor of Cognitive Psychology, creating the crosslinguistic multimodal TalkBank database system for the study of spoken language interactions.
• Brad Mahon: Associate Professor of Psychology, working on the organization of object concepts in the brain and how the brain recovers from injury.
• Kody Manke: Assistant Professor (Teaching), interested in social justice and inequality, using social psychology to understand and address these issues.
• Daniel Oppenheimer: Professor of Social and Decision Sciences and Professor of Psychology (Courtesy), studying how people determine what information to use when making decisions.
• David Plaut: Professor of Psychology and the Neuroscience Institute, using computational modeling and behavioral, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging studies to investigate the neural basis of cognitive processing.
• David Rakison: Associate Professor of Psychology, studying various aspects of infant perception and cognition using behavioral methods and computational modeling.
• Lynne Reder: Professor of Psychology, striving to better understand human memory by combining behavioral, neuroimaging, psychopharmacology, and computational modeling methods.
• Barbara Shinn-Cunningham: Director, Carnegie Mellon Neuroscience Institute, George A. and Helen Durham Cowan Professor of Auditory Neuroscience, working on auditory neuroscience, especially auditory attention and communicating in complex environments.
• Michael J. Tarr: Kavčić-Moura Professor of Cognitive and Brain Science, Professor of Psychology, and the Neuroscience Institute, and Professor of Machine Learning (Courtesy), exploring how high-level structures within biological vision systems arise and how such models can help understand the processes underlying vision.
• Erik Thiessen: Director of Undergraduate Studies and Associate Professor of Psychology, studying learning, with a particular focus on language learning and how infants and adults take advantage of probabilistic information in the input to discover phonological, lexical, and syntactic patterns.
• Michael Trujillo: Assistant Professor of Psychology, bridging social psychology of stigma and understanding of psychobiological pathways linking social stress and health to create a program of theoretical and empirical work dedicated to understanding and improving the health of stigmatized populations.
• Timothy Verstynen: Associate Professor of Psychology and the Neuroscience Institute, studying how the architecture of cortical and subcortical circuits gives rise to the algorithms of decision-making and learning.

Undergraduate Program

The Department of Psychology offers various undergraduate programs, including:

• Bachelor of Arts & Science in Psychology
• Bachelor of Science in Cognitive Science
• Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience
• Unified Double Major in Psychology and Biological Sciences
• Concentrations
• Minors

Areas of Expertise

The department has research opportunities in various areas, including:

• Research Methods
• Laboratories
• Senior Theses

Graduate Program

The Department of Psychology offers graduate programs, including:

• Psychology Ph.D.
• Cognitive Neuroscience Ph.D.

Graduate Research Training Areas

The department has graduate research training areas in:

• Cognitive Science
• Development and Education Psychology
• Social and Health Psychology

Program Requirements

The program requirements for the Psychology Ph.D. and Cognitive Neuroscience Ph.D. are available.

Admissions

The admissions process for the graduate programs involves:

• Application Information & FAQ
• Apply Now

Diversity

The department has a Diversity & Inclusion Committee and participates in the Summer Program for Undergraduate Researchers (SPUR).

Research Areas

The department has research areas in:

• Natural and Artificial Intelligence
• Cognitive Science and Cognitive Neuroscience
• Development and Education
• Social and Health Psychology

Centers & Facilities

The department is associated with various centers and facilities, including:

• CMU-Pitt Brain Imaging Data Generation & Education (BRIDGE) Center
• The Children's School
• Eberly Center
• Neuroscience Institute
• MEG System
• Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
• The Simon Initiative

News

The department publishes news and updates on its research and activities.

Events

The department hosts various events throughout the year.

Support Psychology

Information on supporting the Department of Psychology is available.

Summer Program for Undergraduate Researchers (SPUR)

The department participates in the Summer Program for Undergraduate Researchers (SPUR), providing research opportunities for undergraduate students.