Shawn Rhoads wins Dr. Karen Gale Exceptional PhD Student Award

Congratulations to Dr. Shawn Rhoads, who won the Dr. Karen Gale Exceptional Ph.D. Student award from Georgetown University this year! Shawn won the “at-large” award, which reflects the PhD student whose accomplishments were deemed the most exceptional across all disciplines. Shawn’s award reflects in part his outstanding academic accomplishments, including 3-first author publications and multiple prestigious awards, including an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, the Lindau Nobel Laureate Young Scientist Distinction, an APA Graduate Student Psychological Science Research Grant, and a Mistletoe Foundation Unfettered Research Grant.

The award also recognizes Shawn’s services to the university and the field. For example, Shawn founded a neuroscience “Methods Lab” here at Georgetown that is aimed at fostering cohesion and enhancing skill development among neuroimaging trainees at Georgetown and in the greater Washington, DC area. Shawn has also volunteered as a teaching assistant for the Neuromatch Academy, for which he has tutored other students in model fitting, Bayesian statistics, linear dynamical systems, machine learning, and artificial deep neural networks. He has also published numerous explainer articles, scripts, and coding packages to help other researchers conduct their research.