We seek a five year renewal of our training grant on emotion research. In this renewal, we propose to make major changes to the program structure. In the past, the program was a multi-institution post-doctoral program with trainees spending their first year in Wisconsin and then moving on to another institution to work in the laboratory of their mentor for the second and third years. At the time this proposal was last competitively renewed, we suggested that no single institution had the faculty strength to mount a training program in emotion. However, much has changed at Wisconsin over the past five years. Several new faculty with primary research interests in emotion have been added and Wisconsin is now home to one of the NIMH-funded Centers for Behavioral Science Research, with ours focused on Affective Science. Thus, we now seek to develop a training program at Wisconsin that will focus on three major themes in contemporary research on emotion: 1) Personality, temperament and individual differences: Lifespan developmental, genetic, cognitive and biological approaches; 2) Affective neuroscience; and 3) Emotion and psychopathology. We have 21 program faculty, from five different academic departments, with Psychology as the primary department. We seek funds for 8 new predoctoral trainees each year and 2 new post-doctoral trainees. Pre-doctoral trainees will be supported for two years and post-doctoral trainees for three years. Major elements of the training experience include: a year-long seminar in emotion theory and research, which will include presentations by select program faculty; a Spring seminar each year associated with the Wisconsin Symposium on Emotion, an annual event at Wisconsin that brings 4-5 outside speakers to campus for a meeting on a specific topic in emotion research; participation in periodic meetings of the NINH-supported Wisconsin Center for Affective Science; participation in monthly emotion groups held at different faculty members homes once each month; and a two-day annual workshop featuring presentations by the trainees and a keynote speaker from the outside. We believe this program will provide unique, interdisciplinary training within a single institution and will effectively prepare the next generation of affective scientists.
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