Contact:

Beth Isbell, (505) 277-7512 Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821

May 24, 2001

UNM PSYCHOLOGY STUDENTS RECEIVE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION GRADUATE FELLOWSHIPS

University of New Mexico psychology students Ira Driscoll and Glenn Scheyd were selected to receive National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowships. The awards carry a stipend for each Fellow of $18,000 for a 12-month tenure for three years, and an annual cost-of-education allowance of $10,500, paid to the Fellow’s institution in lieu of tuition and fees.

An Albuquerque-resident, Driscoll earned her graduate fellowship award in the behavioral neuroscience area, while Scheyd, a New Orleans-native, earned his graduate fellowship in the evolutionary psychology category.

Driscoll, who earned a BA in psychology and sociology from UNM last May, is working on a research proposal titled, “The Aging Hippocampus: Behavioral, Biochemical and Structural Findings,” and will focus on investigating the neurobiological substrates of spatial learning and memory in humans employing hippocampus dependent tasks. Specifically, Driscoll plans to identify a decline in hippocampus dependent tasks in the elderly and to characterize neurometabolic alterations in the hippocampus associated with aging and association changes in the volume of the hippocampus with aging performance in hippocampus sensitive tasks in order to identify the involvement of the hippocampus in spatial and non-spatial hippocampus dependent tasks.

The research will also aim to identify the predictability of high levels of testosterone and low levels of estrogen on performance in hippocampus dependent tasks, and how hormonal differences may be related to robust sex differences in performance.

Scheyd earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Texas-Austin in 1999 and is working on research pertaining to “within-sex differences in mating behavior among males.”

Scheyd’s research will study and examine the preferences of heterosexual males, vis-a-vis the ages of their prospective mates, will vary according to the male’s propensity to short-term versus long-term mating. Males with a relatively high disposition to short term mating will prefer females with cues of maximal fertility as opposed to those with a high disposition to long term mating who prefer females of maximal reproductive value.

The study builds on previous research in evolutionary biology that has demonstrated the reproductive value of human females peaks during the middle to late teens and that the fertility of human females peaks on average several years later.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) seeks to ensure the vitality of the human resource base of science, mathematics, and engineering in the United States and to reinforce its diversity, and conducts a competition for Graduate Research Fellowships. Additional awards offered for women in engineering and computer and information science. NSF Graduate Fellowships offer recognition and three years of support for advanced study to approximately 900 outstanding graduate students in the mathematical, physical, biological, engineering, and behavioral and social sciences, including the history of science and the philosophy of science, and to research-based Ph.D. degrees in science education.

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