Congratulations to Nada Alaifan, recipient of the Best Dissertation in Affective Science Award for 2026.
This honour recognizes outstanding dissertation research conducted by Society for Affective Science (SAS) members who received their PhD in the year prior to the upcoming SAS meeting.
“Receiving the Best Dissertation Award from SAS is a privilege and incredibly meaningful to me. It validates the years of hard work, perseverance, and the invaluable mentorship and support I received from Dr. Peter Graf. Awards like this are a powerful reminder that curiosity, deep engagement with ideas, and meticulous effort truly pay off, and that the dedication behind every endeavor never goes unnoticed. This recognition highlights the value of research examining the cognitive mechanisms underlying memory for emotional events, which remain a fascinating puzzle and inspire me to continue contributing to the field.”
Nada Alaifan
Alumnus, UBC Psychology
About Dr. Alaifan
Dr. Nada Alaifan received her PhD in cognitive psychology in 2025, 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 explains the cognitive processes associated with conscious feelings elicited by positive and negative emotional events, which in turn enhance memory for these events. She used this theory to generate predictions for both her experimental work and a meta-analysis comparing memory for emotional versus neutral events. The findings supported the core assumption of the theory, as well as several more specific assumptions.
Join us in congratulating Dr. Alaifan!
