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INS Mid-Career Research Award

This award was established by INS in 1982 and is given to recognize scientific achievements of individuals at the mid-career level.

Eligible Period:11-24 yrs after terminal degree1
Description:Late associate-early full professor level, (growing) international reputation, substantive research impact (e.g., citations, impact factors)
INS Membership
Required:No
Requirements:1 nomination letter and 2 letters of support
Presentation Yes/No:Yes, about research
Annual/Mid-Year:Both

Application Materials: The application should consist of a nominating letter, a CV plus 1-2 letters of support (see criteria). The nominating statements should be written as relating to the specific award for which the member is being nominated (1-2 page max). Nominating statements should be written in English, letters of support may be written in other languages (although English is preferred). Anyone can nominate and write support letters, but we do not accept self-nominations. Please submit all application materials to ins@the-ins.org

Due Date: Nominations may be submitted at any time. Ideally, awards nominations will be received four months prior to the meeting where the award is to be given (either the Annual or Mid-Year Meeting). For an award to be considered for the INS Mid-Year Meeting, please submit nominations by March 31st. For an award to be considered for the INS Annual Meeting, please submit nominations by September 30th of the prior year. Nominations are typically kept under consideration for future meetings if not awarded at a certain meeting (unless the nomination is not eligible).

1 Terminal degree can be either a PhD degree, a master or a certified clinical degree (may vary across countries)

Award Recipients

Lucette Cysique

INS Mid-Career Research Award Recipient

INS 2025 Mid-Year Meeting
Brisbane, Australia – July 2 – 5, 2025

Lucette Cysique is a cross-disciplinary neuropsychologist with extensive neuroimaginag training and long-term experience with neuro-, viral and immune biomarkers. She leads a research program into the neurocognitive complications in major infectious diseases (COVID-19, HIV) and their main comorbidities: brain pathological ageing, cardiovascular diseases, and depressive disorders. Her appointment in the Viral Immunology Systems Program at the Kriby Institute involves the overseeing the Australian Partnership for Preparedness Research on Infectious Disease Emergencies (APPRISE) Long COVID initiative. Working in global epidemies, Dr. Cysique has extensive experience in cross-cultural neuropsychology. Dr. Cysique has held major international and national research responsibilities, with associated funding. She has led the research on more than 40 national and international cohort studies/trials as a neuropsychology or neuroimaging leader.

Angela Jefferson

INS Mid-Career Research Award Recipient

INS 53rd Annual Meeting
New Orleans  – February 12-5, 2025

Dr. Angela L. Jefferson is a licensed clinical psychologist, Professor of Neurology, and Founding Director of the Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer’s Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She is the principal investigator of the Vanderbilt Memory and Aging Project, a longitudinal cohort study, examining the complex intersection of vascular health and Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Jefferson has extensive leadership and research experiences in the fields of cerebrovascular aging and Alzheimer’s disease. She was the first investigator to show that suboptimal reductions in cardiac index relate to lower cerebral blood flow and increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.
 
Robyn Busch

INS Mid-Career Research Award Recipient

INS 52nd Annual Meeting
New York  – February 14 – 17, 2024

Robyn M. Busch, PhD joined the Section of Neuropsychology in 2005 with 50 percent of her time devoted to research regarding cognition in surgical epilepsy patients. She has an appointment in the Epilepsy Center, and her current research projects examine potential genetic and metabolic factors that underlie memory and other cognitive dysfunction in adults with epilepsy. Retrospective research is focused on improving prediction of cognitive outcome after epilepsy surgery and developing a better understanding of the factors that contribute to mood and anxiety disorders in patients with epilepsy. The remainder of her time is spent providing clinical services to adults, primarily patients with epilepsy.
 
Sharon Naismith

INS Mid-Career Research Award Recipient

INS 51st Annual Meeting
San Diego – February 2-4, 2023

Professor Sharon Naismith is a Clinical Neuropsychologist, National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Dementia Leadership Fellow and holds the Leonard P Ullman Chair in Psychology at the University of Sydney, Australia. She leads the NHMRC ‘Centre of Research Excellence to Optimise Sleep in Brain Ageing and Neurodegeneration (CogSleep)’, and a new NHMRC ‘SIESTA’ Synergy Grant, focused on sleep and Alzheimer’s disease. She also leads the Memory Clinics Initiative of the Australian Dementia Network (ADNeT), a national program focused on improving health services for people with Mild Cognitive Impairment and dementia.

Raymond Chan

Arthur Benton Mid-Career Research Award Recipient

INS 2022 Mid-Year Meeting
Barcelona, Spain – July 6 – 8, 2022

Dr Raymond Chan has a long-standing interest in schizophrenia and related disorders, and mentally at-risk individuals. His research interests include (1) identification of biomarkers or endophenotypes for schizophrenia and related disorders; (2) developmental and experimental psychopathology of schizophrenia and related disorders, especially for anhedonia; and (3) distinct and shared psychopathologies across clinical groups and their subclinical sample using a wide range of neuroscientific methods including structural and functional (resting-state and task-based) MRI and MRS as well as behavioural genetics.

Carrie McDonald

Arthur Benton Mid-Career Research Award Recipient

INS 50th Annual Meeting
New Orleans, Virtual Meeting – February 2-4, 2022

Over the past decade, the conceptualization of epilepsy as a network disorder has revolutionized our approach to the study of seizures, as well as psychiatric and cognitive co-morbidities in epilepsy. Brain imaging has been at the forefront of this movement, shifting the focus from one of identifying epileptic lesions to one defining epileptogenic networks. In parallel, the study of cognitive impairments in epilepsy has shifted from the study of isolated cognitive impairments within epilepsy syndromes (e.g., memory impairments in temporal lobe epilepsy; TLE) to one that emphasizes cognitive and psychiatric profiles within and across epilepsy syndromes–or cognitive phenotyping. In this talk, Dr. McDonald will describe a 15- year NIH-funded program of research using advanced, quantitative structural, functional, and diffusion imaging to characterize the neural substrates underlying cognitive co-morbidities in patients with epilepsy.

Tamara Ownsworth

Arthur Benton Mid-Career Research Award Recipient

INS 2021 Mid-Year Meeting
Melbourne, Australia – June 30 – July 3, 2021

After brain injury, self-awareness refers to the ability to accurately recognise changes in one’s functioning and understand how these will affect everyday life and the future. Professor Ownsworth has been investigating self-awareness after brain injury for over 20 years. She has examined neurocognitive and psychological factors influencing self-awareness, identified distinct awareness ‘typologies’ and investigated the relationship between self-awareness and functional and psychosocial outcomes. Her clinical trials have contributed to practice standards concerning the use of metacognitive or feedback-based approaches and she has developed guidelines to support clinical decision making in practice. Her talk will discuss how self-awareness is a generally a positive attribute that is responsive to change through metacognitive skills training approaches. She will also outline the circumstances in which targeting the development of self-awareness is neither necessary nor beneficial.
Catherine Price

Arthur Benton Mid-Career Research Award Recipient

INS 49th Annual Meeting
San Diego, Virtual Meeting – February 2-5, 2021

Since mid-20th century there has been increasing concern for older adults’ risk of cognitive complications after major elective surgery such as knee or cardiac surgery. Yet, there are still no accepted mechanisms for why some older adults experience post-operative cognitive complications. The topic is of increasing concern given: 1) at least 20% of older adults electing surgeries have signs of preoperative cognitive vulnerability; 2) individuals with neurodegenerative diseases will arrive at preoperative centers in exponentially larger numbers over the next 25 to 50 years; and 3) our healthcare systems extensive gap in evidence-based perioperative care for adults with Alzheimer’s disease and other progressive neurodegenerative disorders (e.g., PD). Catherine Price’s presentation will highlight NIH funded interdisciplinary clinical research addressing the complex and controversial topic of preoperative brain and cognitive profiles, pre to postoperative neuroimaging changes, and pre to postoperative cognitive-behavioral changes assessed with traditional and digital technologies. She will touch upon the gap in evidence based research addressing perioperative approaches for individuals with neurodegenerative disorders, and how neuropsychology is the ideal profession to spearhead interdisciplinary educational, research, and clinical training opportunities addressing this area of need.
Mario A. Parra

Arthur Benton Mid-Career Research Award Recipient

INS 2020 Mid-Year Meeting
Virtual Event Meeting – July 1-2, 2020

Novel paradigms for the assessment of memory in ageing and dementia Cognitive functions affected by dementia also decline in normal ageing and in several common age-related diseases. Such functions are sensitive to the cultural background of the affected individual. With the reconceptualization of dementia as a lifelong condition, increasing interest in its early detection and prevention, and emerging global initiatives to fight it, we are facing challenges of larger magnitude and different nature. Novel cognitive paradigms are urgently needed to meet such rapidly growing needs.
Frank Hillary

Arthur Benton Mid-Career Research Award Recipient

INS 48th Annual Meeting
Denver, Colorado, USA – February 5-8, 2020

There is no corner of modern science left untouched by the rippling effects of the “reproducibility crisis”. While concerns about scientific reproducibility are not new, dating back to the 1960s (see Meehl, 1967), a clear watershed moment in the social sciences was the 2015 paper published by Nosek and colleagues which made clear that successful replication of findings is indeed quite challenging, hovering at ~36% [Open Science Collaboration, 2015].
Juan Carlos Arango-Lasprilla

Arthur Benton Mid-Career Research Award Recipient

INS 2019 Mid-Year Meeting
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – July 10-12, 2019

Adam Brickman

Arthur Benton Mid-Career Research Award Recipient

INS 47th Annual Meeting
New York City, New York, USA – February 20-23, 2019

The prevailing hypothesis about the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) suggests a cascade of biological events initiated by abnormal beta-amyloid processing that leads tau-related neuronal dysfunction, neurodegeneration, and dementia. This conceptualization has directly informed current diagnostic schemes, which have evolved from diagnosing AD based on the characterization of a clinical syndrome to diagnosing AD based on the presence of amyloid and tau biological markers alone.

Sallie Baxendale

Arthur Benton Mid-Career Research Award Recipient

INS 2018 Mid-Year Meeting
Prague, Czech Republic – July 18-20, 2018

Since the advent of MRI, rapid advances in structural and functional imaging have presented significant opportunities for the role of the traditional neuropsychological assessment in epilepsy surgery programs. This presentation examines the ways in which the role of clinical neuropsychology has evolved and adapted in response to these challenges over the past 25 years.
Laurel Buxbaum

Arthur Benton Mid-Career Research Award Recipient

INS 46th Annual Meeting
Washington, D.C, USA – February 14-17, 2018

Fueled in part by these findings, our laboratory has developed and (over two decades, elaborated) a cognitive neuroanatomical model of the mechanisms and architecture of a distributed two-stream network critical to the representation and selection of object-related actions. Called the “Two Action Systems Plus (2AS+)” framework, the model posits a complementary role for stored object manipulation knowledge (“action semantics”) and online computations, and specifies the neurocognitive substrates of task-relevant action selection.
Melissa Lamar

Arthur Benton Mid-Career Research Award Recipient

INS 45th Annual Meeting
New Orleans, Louisiana, USA – February 1-4, 2017

Mid-life cardiovascular disease risk factors (CVD-RFs) such as hypertension (HTN) and diabetes (DM) and associated cerebrovascular disease contribute to late-life risk and development of dementia including Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Dr. Alzheimer himself was one of the first to speculate on the role of cerebrovascular disease on brain aging. The US population has changed since initial work in this area was conducted. For example, ~55 million Hispanics live in the US, representing 17% of the population; these numbers will more than double by 2060 to ~130 million or 31% of the US population.
Ralph Benedict

Arthur Benton Mid-Career Research Award Recipient

INS 44th Annual Meeting
Boston, Massachusetts, USA – February 3-6, 2016

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a demyelinating disease of the central nervous system characterized by relapses and gradual worsening of chronic neurological disability. Charcot described cognitive and personality changes in MS patients in 1877, but it would take a century for the quality and frequency of such impairment to be elucidated by Rao and others. Cognitive impairment occurs in 50-60% of MS patients, and dementia in roughly 15%. While the demyelinating WM lesion is the pathologic hallmark of MS, neuropsychological deficits are more robustly correlated with brain atrophy.
John DeLuca

Arthur Benton Mid-Career Research Award Recipient

INS 2015 Mid-Year Meeting
Sydney, Australia – July 1-4, 2015

It is now well established that up to 70% of persons with multiple sclerosis (MS) suffer from cognitive impairment (Chiaravalloti & DeLuca, 2008). Such impairments can have a significant impact on everyday functional activity in persons with MS. Given the frequency and degree of cognitive involvement in persons with MS, and how it affects so many aspects of a person’s life (e.g., vocational, familial, social, emotional, cultural) the need for cognitive rehabilitation therapies and programs is clear.

Brian Levine

Arthur Benton Mid-Career Research Award Recipient

INS 43rd Annual Meeting
Denver, Colorado, USA – February 4-7, 2015

In assessing human behavior, psychologists attempt to approximate the real life experiences and functional abilities of their subjects. This is perhaps most challenging for higher-order cognitive capacities, including memory and executive functions. Changes in these functions are central to society’s most costly clinical disorders, such as the dementias, neuropsychiatric conditions, and traumatic brain injury. Improving assessment of such disorders requires an interdisciplinary approach combining cognitive sciences, neuropsychology, and multimodal neuroimaging.
Keith Yeates

Arthur Benton Mid-Career Research Award Recipient

INS 39th Annual Meeting
Boston, Massachusetts, USA – February 2-5, 2011

Julie Snowden

Arthur Benton Mid-Career Research Award Recipient

INS 31st Annual Meeting
Honolulu, Hawaii, USA – February 5-8, 2003

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