Society Awards
Nominations for the 2026 Society Awards are now open. To encourage all SAS members to participate in the important process of recognizing the accomplishments of our members, the nomination form is very brief (just name, email, and award category).
We encourage self- and other-nominations, particularly from individuals who have been a member of SAS for at least 3 consecutive years (for early-career) and 5 consecutive years (for mid-career and mentorship), and who have made important contributions to diversity and open science, broadly defined.
Award winners will each receive a physical award, complimentary registration for the annual conference, and an opportunity to speak during the awards session at the annual conference.
Nominations Open
Click to to nominate for 2026 awards.
Deadline: Friday, September 12, 2025 (11:59pm BIT-Baker Island Time)
Best Dissertation in Affective Science Award
This honor recognizes outstanding dissertation research conducted by SAS members who received their PhD (or other terminal degree) in the year prior to the upcoming SAS meeting (to be eligible this year, one’s PhD or terminal degree must have been awarded in 2025.)
Previous Winners
2025:
Ke Wang, PhD, University of Virginia – “Essays on Emotion and Decision Making, with Implications for Policy” that was completed at Harvard University under the mentoring of Professors Jennifer Lerner, Amit Goldenberg, and James Gross.
2024:
Anthony Vaccaro, PhD, University of Southern California – “The neuroscience of ambivalent and ambiguous feelings” that was completed at University of Southern California under the mentoring of Professors Jonas Kaplan and Antonio Damasio.
2023:
Daphne Y. Liu, PhD, Stony Brook University – “Interpersonal emotion regulation in current and remitted major depressive disorder: An experience sampling study” that was completed at Washington University in St. Louis under the mentoring of Professor Renee J. Thompson.
Sean Dae Houlihan, PhD, MIT, Dartmouth – “A computational framework for emotion understanding” that was completed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in September 2022 under the mentoring of Professors Rebecca Saxe and Josh Tenenbaum.
2022:
Hannah S. Savage, PhD, The Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University and Radboud University Medical Center. – “The neural basis of threat and safety reversal learning in healthy subjects and patients with social anxiety disorder” that was completed at the University of Melbourne under the mentoring of Professor Ben Harrison.
Meltem Yucel, PhD, Duke University – “’No fair!’: An investigation of children’s development of fairness” that was completed at University of Virginia in May 2021 under the mentoring of Professor Amrisha Vaish.
2021:
Jennifer K. MacCormack, Ph.D.,University of Pittsburgh – “Minding the body: The role of interoception in linking physiology and emotion during stress” – Completed at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill under the mentoring of Professor Kristen Lindquist.
Early-Career in Affective Science Award
This honor recognizes scientific contributions and early evidence of impact for SAS members who received their PhD (or other terminal degree) 10 years or fewer prior to the upcoming SAS meeting (to be eligible this year, one’s PhD or terminal degree must have been awarded in 2016-2025).
Previous Winners
2025:
Elise Kalokerinos, PhD, University of Melbourne
2024:
Brett Q. Ford, PhD, University of Toronto
2023:
Jonathan Stange, PhD, University of Southern California
2022:
Daryl Cameron, PhD, Pennsylvania State University
Dylan Gee, PhD, Yale University
2021:
Katharine H. Greenaway, PhD, University of Melbourne
Mid-Career Trajectory in Affective Science Award
This honor celebrates the outstanding scientific impact of SAS members who received their PhD (or other terminal degree) more than 10 and fewer than 25 years prior to the upcoming SAS meeting (to be eligible this year, one’s PhD or terminal degree must have been awarded in 2001-2015).
Previous Winners
2025:
Derek Isaacowitz, PhD, Washington University in St Louis
2024:
Jamil Zaki, PhD, Stanford University
2023:
Naomi I. Eisenberger, PhD, University of California, Los Angeles
2022:
Anthony D. Ong, PhD, Cornell University
2021:
Abigail A. Marsh, PhD, Georgetown University
Mentorship Award
This honor celebrates outstanding mentoring, including undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral mentorship, conducted by SAS members who received their PhD (or other terminal degree) more than 20 years prior to the upcoming SAS meeting (to be eligible this year, one’s PhD or terminal degree must have been awarded prior to 2006).
Previous Winners
2024:
Iris Mauss, PhD, University of California, Berkeley
2023:
Wendy Berry Mendes, PhD, University of California, San Francisco
2022:
Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, Northeastern University
James J. Gross, PhD, Stanford University
Affective Science Paper of the Year
Sponsored by the journal Affective Science and the Society for Affective Science
This award, created in 2024, highlights the exceptional work of the affective science community. All papers published in Affective Science (including advance online publication) during the calendar year preceding the award are eligible. The author team of the Affective Science Paper of the Year receives a cash prize and a certificate, presented at the SAS annual conference closing ceremony.
Selection Process
- The Editors in Chief (EICs) and Associate Editors (AEs) of Affective Science nominate papers, among those they handled, that were published during the award year.
- From this pool, the EICs identify a short list of top papers, which are evaluated by an independent ad hoc committee convened by the SAS Executive Board.
- Each paper is rated (in randomized order) on:
- significance to affective science
- likely impact
- methodological soundness
- strength of evidence
- originality
Previous Winners
2025:
The inaugural Best Paper in Affective Science Award was presented at the 2025 SAS Conference in Portland, Oregon on March 22, 2025, to The emergence of organized emotion dynamics in childhood Nencheva, M. L., Nook, E. C., Thornton, M. A., Lew-Williams, C., & Tamir, D. I. (2024). Affective Science 5, 246–258 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-024-00248-y