The Lupina Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellows program is in its second year supporting bright researchers engaged in studies and solutions that address the social determinants of health. While the Faculty of Arts is accepting applications for 2023-24 Lupina Postdoctoral Fellows, meet the 2022-23 fellows:
Dr. Derek Albert, Lupina Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow, 2022-23
Stereotype Threat: A Potential Contributor to Distraction and Workplace Accidents
Dr. Derek Albert is a cognitive scientist whose program of research under the Lupina Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship examines how mind wandering (i.e., spontaneous, off-task thoughts) resulting from the fear of being penalized, negatively evaluated, or stereotyped may increase the risk of workplace accidents among migrant workers and other at-risk groups. “The long-term goal of this collaboration is to create a virtual-reality platform capable of safely studying risk factors, mechanisms, and impacts of mind wandering in the workplace, and supporting the development and administration of evidence-based interventions for mitigating the impact of mind wandering in the workplace,” says Dr. Albert.
Read Dr. Albert's full research summary.
Dr. Eugene Kukshinov, Lupina Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow, 2022-23
“Well Represented”: The Positive Effect of Avatar Customization (via Presence) On Mental Well-Being in Social VR
With a PhD in media and communication, Dr. Eugene Kukshinov’s research interests include psychology, cognition, presence, immersion, user experience (UX) and virtual reality (VR). His program of research under the Lupina Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship analyzes people’s attitude towards and behaviour in social virtual environments during various activities (from educational to entertaining) to evaluate the experiences of being represented and the state of presence in those environments, and their effects on users’ mental well-being. “Negative social/cultural effects of mis- and underrepresentation in the digital environments are well known among cultural/critical scholars, but embodying an avatar can also impose strong psychological effects on users, and yet, very little is known about the positive effects of avatar customization, specifically on users’ mental well-being and health,” says Dr. Kukshinov.
Read Dr. Kukshinov's full research summary.