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.
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).
2026 Winner
Desmond Ong
University of Texas at Austin
Dr. Desmond Ong is an assistant professor of psychology and part of the inter-departmental Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Computational Linguistics group at the University of Texas at Austin (UT). Prior to joining UT, Dr. Ong was an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore, and a research scientist at the Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC), A*STAR Singapore. He earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University, and graduated summa cum laude with his B.A. from Cornell University. Dr. Ong’s research focuses on how people understand the emotions and mental states of those around them (Affective Cognition). His interdisciplinary research uses computational modeling, language analyses, developmental studies, neuroscientific and psychophysiological methods, and meta-analyses. He published the first meta-analysis on cognitive appraisal theories of emotion, as well as putting forward a framework of emotion understanding as third-person appraisal. Most recently, he has been studying how generative AI may be able to provide empathy (“LLMpathy”), how people perceive such artificial empathy, and how this relates to AI sycophancy and mental health, and he has contributed to public policy and AI ethics and governance efforts to develop safer and more ethical AI. Dr. Ong’s work has been recognized with an NSF Early Career Development (CAREER) Award to advance research on affective cognition in AI systems, as well as three best paper awards, and his teaching has been recognized with awards from both NUS and UT.
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).
2026 Winner
Hedy Kober
University of California Berkeley
Dr. Hedy Kober is a Professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley, also appointed at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute. Until recently, she was an Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience at Yale University. Dr. Kober completed her undergraduate degree at Columbia University, where she also completed her MA, MPhil, and PhD in Psychology with a focus on Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. At both Yale and Berkeley, her laboratory has taken multidisciplinary affective, clinical, computational, and translational neuroscience approaches to the study of self-regulation, often in the context of psychopathology, with a focus on substance use disorders – the most prevalent, costly, and deadly psychiatric disorders. Dr. Kober’s research has been funded by numerous NIH grants, has been published in high-impact journals, and has been very well cited. She has also won numerous awards and fellowships, including a NIDA/NIAAA Early Career Investigator Award, an Early Career Investigator Award from College on Problems of Drug Dependence (CPDD), an “outstanding mentor” award from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and most recently, the Jacob P. Waltezky award from the Society for Neuroscience. Notably, in 2016-2021, she completed a re-specialization in clinical psychology, and is now also a licensed clinical psychologist.
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
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.)
2026 Winners
Nada Alaifan
King Saud University
Dr. Nada Alaifan is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at King Saud University. She received her PhD in cognitive psychology from the University of British Columbia (UBC), where she worked under the supervision of Dr. Peter Graf. Her research examines how emotions shape human memory, with a specific focus on the cognitive processes underlying the influence of emotional valence and arousal on episodic memory. In her dissertation, she proposed a novel cognitive-science theory that accounts for the cognitive processes that elicit conscious feelings from positive and negative emotional events and enhance memory for these events. She used this theory to predict the results of her experimental work and a meta-analysis on memory for emotional versus neutral events. Her research interests include memory, emotions, sex differences, and meta-analysis.
Kieran McVeigh
Northeastern University
Kieran McVeigh is an affective scientist who studies the psychological, physiological, and neural bases of emotion. Kieran’s work focuses on using computational methods to study situational and individual differences in these processes. He recently completed his PhD at Northeastern University under the mentorship of Drs. Ajay Satpute, Lisa Feldman Barrett, and Karen Quigley.
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.
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).
2026 Winner
Sheri Johnson
University of California Berkeley
Sheri Johnson is the Director of the Cal Mania (CALM) team and a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California Berkeley. Her research focuses on emotion-triggered impulsivity and on mood disorders. Her current grants focus on understanding circadian rhythm disturbances in bipolar disorder and how those influence goal-seeking behavior, and on strengthening circadian rhythms using lifestyle interventions for those with bipolar disorder (https://calm.berkeley.edu/). She has published over 300 manuscripts and 6 books. Her favorite part of her job is working with trainees.
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