Amy Criss jumped up and down with excitement when she heard she would be receiving a five-year $440,000 National Science Foundation Early Career Development CAREER award. It was her first application for the grant.

‘It was my first application ever, which is a little bit crazy because this doesn’t normally happen,’ Criss said. ‘Usually you submit a grant and then don’t get it, and you revise and don’t get it, then you revise again and then you may get it. I was unbelievably surprised.’

Criss, an assistant professor in the psychology department in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been teaching at Syracuse University for four years and focuses on researching episodic memory.

Episodic memory is memory for a specific event. But remembering one specific event well is difficult to do, she said. Imagine eating breakfast every day and then having someone ask you to recall one specific breakfast over another, she said.

When Criss was in graduate school at Indiana University, episodic memory was not what she wanted to pursue, she said. She was originally interested in the psychological subject of categorization.

‘I wanted to study questions like how people distinguish the difference between a dog and a bear, even though they look similar from a distance,’ Criss said.

But there was no more room available to work in the Indiana lab that studies categorization, so she switched to studying memory. She said she realized she loves studying memory and decided to stay with it.

Criss’ research on episodic memory will contain two essential components. First, research will be conducted on what type of information is easy to remember versus what type of information is difficult to remember. The second component will focus on what things are effective or ineffective probes for retrieving specific memories.

Criss will conduct a series of different experiments to gather her research. She uses a computer model that describes how people remember things. The program takes in the input information and outputs data. Her goal is to make the computer program remember and forget things just like people do.

The CAREER award, the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious award, goes to a junior faculty member who embodies the components of an outstanding researcher, excellent educator and leader, said Lawrence Gottlob, program director for perception, action and cognition at the National Science Foundation.

Criss was chosen for the award because she is working on important questions in the study of memory, Gottlob said.

‘She shows great promise as an early-career researcher and as a person to create broader impacts in the academic community,’ Gottlob said in an e-mail.

The grant can help further Criss’ career and memory research, but it must also be used to develop a five-year teaching plan. Criss has three undergraduate students and two graduate students who are helping with her research. She also works with students over the summer in the Psychology Research Initiative in Diversity Enhancement at SU’s Memory Modeling Lab program by conducting research on episodic memory.

Criss teaches about her research and will involve undergraduate students, said Marc Howard, an associate professor in the psychology department at SU.

Howard said he believes Criss is conducting innovative research within her field. He said he thinks Criss’ research could be considered working outside of what people in the field normally do.

‘She chose to do something that is high-risk and could be potentially transformative,’ Howard said.

The award is a wonderful achievement, said Peter Vanable, associate professor and interim chair in the psychology department at SU. By receiving a CAREER award, Criss has also made a mark for women in science, he said.

‘It is prestigious, not just for our department but for the university as a whole. SU is very much committed to bringing on more women in science, and Amy is a prime example of someone we are delighted to support,’ Vanable said.

Criss prides herself on what she can do best, she said. She said she hopes to make her field approachable so everyday people can comprehend as well.

‘My whole entire professional life, I sort of feel like I made some mistakes, and I probably didn’t take advice I should have taken, but somehow things just work out,’ Criss said. ‘Do the best you can, and things work out.’

cjsunde@syr.edu

Published on December 5, 2010 at 12:00 pm