FALL 2020 Cyberpsychology Seminar Series
The New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) invites you to the 2020-2021 Cyberpsychology Program Seminar Series. Speakers include leaders in academia and professional practice addressing current themes and trends in the field of cyberpsychology. Fall 2020 seminars will be held virtually.
"DISINFORMATION - IT'S THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS"
Dr. Rand Waltzman
Thursday, September 24, 2020
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EDT
Rand Waltzman, Ph.D. has 35 years of experience performing and managing research in Artificial Intelligence applied to domains including social media and cognitive security in the information environment. He is currently a Senior Information Scientist at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, CA. Prior to joining RAND, he was the acting Chief Technology Officer of the Software Engineering Institute (Washington, DC) of Carnegie Mellon University. Before that he served as Program Manager in the Information Innovation Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) where he created and managed the Social Media in Strategic Communications (SMISC) program and the Anomaly Detection at Multiple Scales (ADAMS) insider threat detection program. Dr. Waltzman joined DARPA from Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories (LM-ATL), where he served as Chief Scientist for the Applied Sciences Laboratory. Prior to LM-ATL he was an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, where he taught and performed research in applications of Artificial Intelligence technology to a variety of problem areas including digital entertainment, automated reasoning, decision support, and cyber threat detection. Before his professorship, he served as a DARPA Program Manager in Machine Intelligence for Image Understanding. Dr. Waltzman has also held research positions at the University of Maryland and Teknowledge Corporation (the first commercial artificial intelligence company in the world where he started in 1983).
"YOU ONLY HAVE 1UP HERE: A DIGITAL DIVE INTO PROBLEMATIC GAMING"
Mr. Dustyn Leff, M.A.
Thursday, October 8, 2020
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM EDT
Dustyn Leff is currently a first-year medical student at the University of Minnesota - Duluth Campus. He obtained degrees in biology and psychology as an undergraduate and then a master’s degree in psychology (experimental track) at the University of Minnesota – Duluth. His thesis project examined problematic gaming, looking at both self-reported behaviors and reactions to different stimuli using eye-tracking technology. His research has focused on virtual reality and its impact on learning, working in a collaborative group involving members from psychology, communication, and computer science. Mr. Leff’s professional interests include the biological correlates of addiction with the goal of exploring different fields (neurology, psychiatry, and family practice).
"VIRTUALLY IMMERSIVE REALITY FOR
THE STUDY OF RACIAL BIAS IN POLICE USE OF FORCE"
Dr. John Tawa
Thursday, October 15, 2020
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM EDT
John Tawa, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology and Education Department at Mount Holyoke College. Dr. Tawa’s research, broadly speaking, examines the role of race in intergroup interactions. He has two general lines of research. First, he is interested in relations between minority groups (e.g., relations between Blacks and Asians). Some of his research supports the idea that perceived competition for resources (e.g., educational, economic) creates greater distance between Blacks and Asians relative to both their distances towards the White majority group. The second line of Dr. Tawa’s research examines the ways in which people’s essentialist beliefs about race influence their intergroup behaviors. This research demonstrates that people who think of race as biologically distinct (i.e., racial essentialism) tend to experience less comfort among racial outgroup members. While the content of Dr. Tawa’s research focuses on intergroup relations, methodologically he is particularly interested in the use of technology to directly assess people's "real-time" behavior, in lieu of a primary reliance on self-reported behavior. In the study on resource competition described above, Dr. Tawa’s participants created self-resembling avatars and interacted in social events in the virtual world “Second Life”; when a resource competition task was introduced into the social event, Black and Asian participants were found to increase their collective physical distance towards each other. Dr. Tawa is also currently in the process of developing a study using virtual reality to examine racial bias in police decisions to use lethal force.
"TELEBEHAVIORAL HEALTH WITH COUPLES:
TECHNOLOGICAL AND TREATMENT OPPORTUNITIES"
Dr. Corinne Datchi
Tuesday, November 10, 2020
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM EST
Corinne Datchi, Ph.D., is Associate Professor and Chair of the Psychology Department at William Paterson University in New Jersey. Dr. Datchi is a Fellow in the American Psychological Association (APA) of the Society for Family Psychology. She holds a Ph.D. in counseling psychology and is board certified in couple and family psychology. Dr. Datchi is VP for Practice of the Society for Family Psychology and serves on the editorial board of the APA journal Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice. Her clinical and research interests focus on the treatment of couples and families in various settings including the criminal justice system. Dr. Datchi’s clinical practice includes telebehavioral health services for couples.
"YOU CAN NEVER TURN IT OFF: ONLINE RACISM AS
AN EMERGING PUBLIC HEALTH CONCERN IN THE DIGITAL ERA"
Dr. Brian Keum
Tuesday, November 17, 2020
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM EST
Brian Keum, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. He received his Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology at the University of Maryland-College Park and completed his American Psychological Association-Accredited Internship at the University of Maryland Counseling Center. Prior to his doctoral education, he earned his M.A. in Mental Health Counseling from Columbia University Teachers College and a B.S. in Anatomy and Cell Biology from McGill University. Using an interdisciplinary framework drawing from theories of racism, online communication, human-computer interactions, and violence, Dr. Keum’s primary research examines the biopsychosocial impact of online racism and racial violence in today’s digital society. He is particularly interested in exploring the health and mental health implications of online racism among developmentally vulnerable and digitally-connected (e.g., Gen Z) populations, including adolescents and emerging adults of color. His research has been funded and recognized by multiple divisions of the American Psychological Association (General Psychology; Counseling Psychology; Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity, and Race; Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy; Advancement of Psychotherapy), the American Psychological Foundation, the Asian American Psychological Association, Society for Psychotherapy Research, Active Minds, and by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.