Steinmetz President-Elect of Association for Psychological Science (APS)
Joseph Steinmetz, executive dean and vice provost, College of Arts and Sciences, and professor of psychology and neuroscience, has been elected as president-elect of the Association for Psychological Science (APS). He will serve as president of the organization for one year beginning in May, 2012 and as a member of the APS board of directors until 2014. Steinmetz served as board member of the APS from 1997-2000. The APS was founded in 1988 by a group of scientifically oriented psychologists interested in advancing scientific psychology and its representation as a science at the national level. The organization has approximately 23,000 members.
To Steinmetz, APS is the premier voice for psychological scientists and critical to the future success of the field. “APS has had a significant impact on many areas of interest to psychological scientists, including the worlds of research, teaching, and public policy."
Steinmetz’s research focuses on the neurobiology of learning and memory using various neuroscience techniques, such as electrophysiology and brain imaging, to study how the brain encodes, stores, and retrieves memories. Specifically, Steinmetz studies classical eyeblink conditioning and the role of the cerebellum — the part of the brain that deals with motor control, balance, and equilibrium — in its acquisition and expression. He also conducts parallel experiments involving human and animal models. The findings have important implications for a variety of clinical disorders, such as autism, schizophrenia, fetal alcohol syndrome, and anxiety disorders.
While serving as APS President and board member, Steinmetz is “very interested in promoting the many important roles that psychological science plays as a foundational science involved in solving some of the world’s most complex problems, as well as the role the discipline plays as a member of the larger academic community.” Steinmetz believes that the future of psychological science, in part, depends on “connections we build with other scientific disciplines — enhancing these ties is also a goal for my time on the APS Board.”
Steinmetz is a Fellow of the Society of Experimental Psychologists, an APS and APA Fellow, and his work has been widely published in prestigious journals.