Congratulations to Dr. Daniela Palombo and Dr. Victoria Savalei, who received 2024 UBC Killam Faculty Research Prizes!
UBC’s Faculty Research Awards recognize the research excellence and scholarly achievements of faculty from across all disciplines, ranging from the applied sciences and medicine to the social sciences and humanities. Award recipients are selected by UBC’s Faculty Research Awards Committee and include early career researchers through to established members of faculty. The award also considers research impact and leadership in the specified discipline or field of study.
“I am honoured to receive the Killam Faculty Research Prize. This award reflects the incredible dedication of my trainees—past and present—and the support I have received from my mentors, colleagues, collaborators, and the university. ”
Dr. Palombo adds, “I am excited to continue to do the work I love, which explores how humans construct their personal and collective narratives of the past through remembering. It is a gift to share this passion with my trainees who bring innovation and creativity to our work. I look forward to the insights this work could bring—from deepening our fundamental understanding of the building blocks of memory to its clinical, social, or educational applications.”
About Dr. Palombo and Dr. Savalei
Dr. Daniela Palombo, an associate professor in UBC’s department of psychology, received the Early Category of the Killam Faculty Research Prize. Dr. Palombo investigates cognitive and neural factors associated with how we form and retain autobiographical memories and how this may differ across individuals. She also examines how autobiographical memory influences non-mnemonic functions, with a primary focus on future imagination and decision making. Her research approach is multi-faceted; She explores these topics in healthy individuals as well as in neuropsychological (e.g., amnesia) and psychiatric populations (e.g., post-traumatic stress disorder). She also uses neuroimaging methods, including MRI and fMRI.
Dr. Victoria Savalei, a professor in UBC’s department of psychology, received the Established Category of the Killam Faculty Research Prize. Dr. Savalei is an expert in structural equation modeling, a powerful statistical modeling tool that allows researchers to test complex theories involving observed and latent variables. Her research advances and improves this methodology for use in applications across many areas of psychology. She has been pioneering the development and investigation of new ways to apply this methodology to difficult kinds of data, such as incomplete data and non normally distributed data, which are extremely common in practice. She has been developing innovative ways to help researchers decide between competing models for the same data.
The Office of the VP, Research and Innovation will be hosting a reception on June 5, 2025 to acknowledge the achievements of our researchers.
Join us in congratulating Dr. Daniela Palombo and Dr. Victoria Savalei on this recognition!
