Announcing Borine Award Fall 2023 Winners

Each year, graduating psychology undergraduates undertake a project that enables them to delve into a topic of personal interest. The Sharon Borine Top Capstone Award recognizes those students who excel in creating exceptional senior projects. The selection process for the award includes the nomination of candidates by section leaders and faculty members. Subsequently, an ad-hoc panel of faculty members evaluates and ranks the nominees.

Congratulations to the Fall 2023 award recipients: Rose Grimestad, Emaleigh Neo, and Elizabeth Tychinina.

Rose Grimestad was awarded first place with an award of $250 for the paper “Intersections of Race and Gender in ADHD.” This literature review sought to examine the existing research on ADHD psychopathology and treatment through an intersectional lens and how these intersections of race and gender affect presentation, treatment, and biases in ADHD.  

Grimestad is a December 2023 graduate of the University of Minnesota’s Psychology Program with a minor in Integrative Neuroscience. She was interested in using an intersectional approach to learn more about the differences in psychopathology across social groups to reduce inequalities in healthcare. When she is not studying psychology or neuroscience, Grimestad enjoys spending time with her dog, watching movies, and caring for her plants. 

Emaleigh Neo received the second place Capstone Award and a monetary prize of $150 for her paper “Personality Changes Pre- to Post-injury in Traumatic Brain Injury: A Review.” Advised by Dr. Jacob Finn, Neo worked in the VA Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Model Systems Lab for over a year. She was interested in personality change as it was one area of TBI research that is not studied as often and was one of the areas not assessed in the Model Systems Research.

Neo is originally from Racine, Wisconsin, and majored in Psychology with Integrative Neuroscience and Sociology of Law, Criminology, and Justice minors. She applied for clinical psychology graduate programs to become a licensed clinical psychologist working in a forensic setting. 

Elizabeth Tychinina is the recipient of the $75 third-place Capstone Award for the paper titled, “BDNF as a Possible Pathway for Schizophrenia Treatment: A Literature Review.” Tychinina got inspiration into looking at brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and its connection to schizophrenia during her time in a psychology research lab focused on decision-making. She was researching different connections between popular decision-making measurement models and neurodivergent populations and found a paper about BDNF levels and decision-making choices made by those with schizophrenia. This interest led to her Capstone paper surrounding why and how researching BDNF could provide a pathway to better understand the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and treatment for the debilitating illness. 

Tychinina grew up in Lakeville, Minnesota, however, her family emigrated from Ukraine which she believes has shaped her personality and work ethic. Tychinina has always loved learning about people so this focused her career on biology, psychology, and a Spanish minor where she got to learn another language and culture. She is a Fall 2023 graduate and is planning to take a gap year where she can get more work experience, volunteering, and traveling before pursuing medical school in the future. 

Composed by Madison Stromberg, communications assistant.