KAZUO MORI STUDENT TRAVEL AWARDS - CLOSED

The Kazuo Mori Student Travel Awards were established in 2015 to support student members’ travel to the SARMAC biennial meeting. The awards are named in honor of Prof Kazuo Mori, Executive Director of SARMAC from 2012 to 2015. Prof Mori is a creative scientist; a fearless leader of psychological science in Japan; an excellent teacher; an artist, author and illustrator of books for children and adults—and most of all, a tireless and generous advocate for students in the field of applied memory and cognition. In 2022, the Association for Psychological Science recognized Prof Mori’s outstanding support for early-career researchers by awarding him a prestigious APS Mentor Award. Prof Mori is also champion of international collaborations—he works hard to bring international scholars together to work on large-scale projects and regularly hosts a productive meeting for applied cognitive researchers in Japan (The International Roundtable on Memory, IROM). Prof Mori currently works at the Faculty of School Education at Matsumoto University in Japan. You can read more about Prof Mori, his research and IROM, here.

2025 Winners of the Kazuo Mori Student Travel Award

The SARMAC Diversity and Inclusion Travel Awards were set up in 2023 to promote diversity and inclusion within the SARMAC community and to help researchers from all backgrounds and geographic locations attend the SARMAC biennial meeting. In 2023, the Committee on Diversity and Inclusion offered to cover full expenses of four applicants to attend SARMAC XIV in Nagoya, Japan. In 2025, following a survey of SARMAC members, the committee opted to offer awards funding part of attendance expenses, and supported 14 applicants to attend SARMAC XV in Kildare, Ireland.

Each round, applications are blindly adjudicated by at least two experts in the field of memory and cognition (e.g., members of a the Committee on Diversity and Inclusion, SARMAC Board, the Student Caucus, and external experts.

Recipients of the 2025 Diversity and Inclusion Travel Awards

Obed Appiah - Åbo Akademi, Turku

Project title: Cognitive Bias in Asylum Decision-Making in Europe: An Investigation of Asylum Official Beliefs about its Nature and Scope

Zeynep Gul - Koç University, Istanbul

Project title: Motivated Memory in The Retrieval of Group-Related Positive and Negative Information

Caleb Schlaupitz - University Of California, Irvine

Project title: An Evaluation of Master Narrative Themes in Transgender Coming Out Memories: Constructing the Self Through the Lens of Others

Fiza Hasan - Simon Fraser University, Burnaby

Project title: Examining Children’s Memory Organization Using a Reaction Time Paradigm: The Rapid Reorganization of Variable Details into Categories for a Repeated Event

Jiawen Lin - Fudan University, Shanghai

Project title: Reward-Enhanced False Memory Persists in a Long Term

Kyra Scott - University Of Birmingham, Birmingham

Project title: Pixel-Perfect or far from Perfect: Investigating the Feasibility of Synthetic-Faces in Identification-Lineups

Luisa Henao - Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogota

Project title: Challenging Brain Drain: Effect of a Verbal Intervention on the Impact of Smartphones on Memory

Ezgi Bilgin - Cornell University, Ithaca

Project title: Constructing the Self and Autobiographical Memory Online: A Cross-Cultural Study

Meenakshi Menon - Georgia State University, Atlanta

Project title: APOE ε4 Status and Autobiographical Memory in Older Adults

Patrick Haylock - The University Of Melbourne, Melbourne

Project title: Autobiographical Memory Flexibility, Mechanisms of Wellbeing, and Depression in Young People

Calvin Deans-Browne - University College London, London

Project title: The Everyday Argument Assessment Task: Belief in the Claim of a Political Argument Predicts the Perceived Strength of the Argument

Victory Ulamen – University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen

Project title: Interviewing Witnesses of Interpersonal Conflict: Improving Report Accuracy with the Use of the Timeline Technique

Tia Blackall – Simon Fraser University, Burnaby

Project title: Lay Perceptions and Misconceptions of Eyewitness and Fingerprint Evidence

Uyen Doan – The University Of Melbourne, Melbourne

Project title: The Longitudinal Relationship between Reduced Autobiographical Memory Specificity, Negative Beliefs, and Depression in Community-Based Young People

Recipients of the 2023 Diversity and Inclusion Travel Awards

Aya Inamori Williams - University of California, San Francisco

Project title: Emotional acculturation in Chinese American immigrant parents: Insights from bilingual parent-child affirmation discussion

Nkansah Anakwah - Birmingham City University

Project title: The effect of authority on eyewitness memory reports across cultures

Dara Zwemer - University of Oklahoma

Project title: Differences in Eyewitness Acceptance of Contradictory and Additive Misinformation

Lan Anh Do - Tufts University

Project title: The Cognitive and Affective Consequences of Collaborative Learning

THE CALL FOR STUDENT TRAVEL GRANTS FOR THE SARMAC 2025 MEETING IN CO. KILDARE WILL OPEN ON JANUARY 01, 2025

Congratulations to the recipients of the student travel awards 2023!

We are excited to announce that we will be offering a minimum of 6 awards to help students attend SARMAC XV in Kildare, Ireland, to present their work. Based on a recent survey, SARMAC student members indicated overwhelming preference (73%) for the Travel Awards to provide partial attendance support that considers the location of the recipient. Therefore, the award for SARMAC XV will cover the overall conference fees (travel, accommodation, conference fees) at 75%. The maximum value of each award will be USD $2000.

An adjudication committee comprising of the SARMAC Events and Awards committee, early career researchers, and senior PhD students will blindly review the applications. The grants will be awarded based on research quality and lack of alternative financial assistance. Please see the adjudication rubric here.

To apply for funding, please complete the application form and then email the completed form to students@sarmac.org by February 28, 2025. Any student who is presenting (talk, poster) is eligible to apply.

To apply, you must:

1. Have student status at the time of applying for SARMAC XV.

2. Be responsible for presenting the project.

3. Be present throughout the duration of the conference.

4. Be a SARMAC student member. Note that any members who meet the eligibility criteria are welcome to apply, and note that students are welcome to apply for both the Student Travel Award and the Diversity and the Inclusion Travel Award if they meet the eligibility criteria for both (if awarded both, one award will “top up” the other award to cover 100% expenses). Please ensure that the SARMAC-subscribed email address is being used in the application. Contact the executive director if unsure of the registered email address.

Materials that need to be submitted to students@sarmac.org by Feb 28th:

1. Completed application form.

2. A PDF with evidence of estimated budget costs (where possible)

3. A letter of support from your primary supervisor

We strongly encourage any student who is planning to present at the conference to apply! If you have any questions, please email students@sarmac.org

Decisions will be made by March 21, 2025 (just prior to the early-bird registration deadline). Decisions will be made on the basis of this rubric.

We look forward to seeing you in Ireland!

The SARMAC Student Caucus