William A. Owens Award – Research Awards

Gregory Strauss

akatki on March 21, 2025

William A. Owens Creative Research Award 2025

Gregory Strauss, Franklin Professor of Psychology in the Franklin College Department of Psychology, is an internationally recognized leader in schizophrenia research, specializing in the study of negative symptoms: deficits in motivation, pleasure, and social engagement that significantly impact quality of life. His work has reshaped the conceptualization, measurement, and treatment of these symptoms, establishing him as a major force in the field. Strauss directs the Clinical Affective Neuroscience Laboratory and the Georgia Psychiatric Risk Evaluation Program, where his team develops innovative assessment tools and targeted interventions for individuals at risk for psychotic disorders. His research has been cited over 13,000 times, and he has secured more than $85 million in grant funding. With over 230 publications, numerous invited talks, and high-impact awards—including the Rising Star Award from the Schizophrenia International Research Society—Strauss continues to advance understanding and treatment of schizophrenia’s most challenging symptoms.

Christina Boyd

akatki on March 13, 2024

William A. Owens Creative Research Award

Christina Boyd, Thomas P. and M. Jean Lauth Professor of Political Science, is one of the nation’s most important scholars researching diversity in the courts. She has published 34 refereed journal articles and two books, including “Supreme Bias: Gender and Race in U.S. Supreme Court Confirmations” (Stanford University Press, 2023). In “Supreme Bias,” Boyd and her co-authors examine the dynamics of gender and race at Supreme Court confirmation hearings held before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The authors use extensive new data and qualitative evidence to highlight how female nominees and people of color nominees have faced significantly more challenges during the confirmation process than their white male colleagues, revealing that race and gender bias exist even at the highest echelon of U.S. legal power. With rigorous and empirically credible research, Boyd also has explored how judicial diversity, like gender and race, shapes some judicial outcomes and processes.

Bradley Wright

slquinlan on April 5, 2023

William A. Owens Creative Research Award 2023

Bradley Wright, professor and head of the Department of Public Administration and Policy, has built a globally influential body of research addressing how work environments in government affect public employee attitudes and behaviors. His research is highly regarded for expanding the understanding of human motivation in public sector settings. Wright has united different streams of knowledge into a coherent whole, raising his profile as a scientist who explores innovative ways to study topics in his field. Wright is particularly skillful in bringing research methods used in psychology to questions in public administration. By designing models of methodological rigor and sophistication, he has created illuminating measurements of public service motivations and values with real-world implications. For instance, he has furthered understanding of government employee behavior in highly stressful work environments in the US and internationally, such as police officer motivation and stress during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Shane Singh

jennbryant on April 11, 2022

William A. Owens Creative Research Award 2022

Shane Singh, professor in the School of Public and International Affairs, is a leading scholar on the theory and substance of political behavior. He applies innovative methodologies to understand decision-making trends and attitudes among voters in democratic countries. His 2021 book “Beyond Turnout: How Compulsory Voting Shapes Citizens and Political Parties” explores how individuals and political elites change their behaviors in response to the incentives of compulsory voting. The downstream effects of compulsory voting, his research shows, are not unambiguously beneficial to democracy. He continues to branch out to other important research areas, including the causes of voter satisfaction with democracy. Singh is co-founder of the Election Research Group, which designs and employs proprietary web-based experiments to understand electoral behavior, focusing on the consequences of pre-election opinion polls for voter decision-making.

Lawrence Sweet

ovprweb on April 16, 2021

William A. Owens Creative Research Award 2021

University of Georgia researcher Lawrence Sweet

Lawrence Sweet, Gary R. Sperduto Professor in Clinical Psychology, is an internationally recognized transdisciplinary researcher. Trained as a clinical neuropsychologist, he is a methodologist with specializations in cognitive assessment and multimodal neuroimaging. He also creatively combines knowledge from other disciplines, departments and programs to generate insights into pressing challenges in public health and clinical psychology. He has published in top journals in several areas of research including human development, behavioral medicine, cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology. His neuroimaging approaches, taught to his trainees, have advanced understanding of neurocognitive risk markers of depression, addiction, stroke, vascular dementia and other conditions. His research has contributed to knowledge of the human lifespan from early-life adversity to aging. He has created an outstanding record of training successful researchers, offering mentorship across disciplines and at every level of career development. His impact is reflected in new generations of scientists across numerous fields.

Emilie Phillips Smith

ovprweb on March 21, 2019

William A. Owens Creative Research Award 2019

Emilie Phillips Smith, professor and former department head of Human Development and Family Science, studies the role of sociocultural variables in child and family development. She engages children and families of diverse racial-ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds in rigorously tested approaches to reduce youth hyperactivity and problem behavior and promote positive identity and development. Smith’s work deploys rigorous cluster randomized trials integrating multi-method approaches to examine the effects of evidence-based practices on children, their caregivers and care settings. This applied research has demonstrated positive effects not only on individual youth, but also on violence, aggression and victimization across multiple schools, locales and universities. A pioneer in implementation science, she is advancing the use of connected technologies and telehealth in building capacity for fostering effective practices. Her studies are interdisciplinary, highly original and influential, involving collaborations with colleagues and community stakeholders and providing unique research opportunities for students.

Jody Clay-Warner

ovprweb on April 14, 2017

William A. Owens Creative Research Award 2017

Jody Clay-Warner, Meigs Professor of Sociology, investigates injustice from both basic and applied vantage points, addressing critical problems in our society: injustice, violence, victimization, and the laws and policies designed to control these problems. Her research broadens the understanding of injustice by systematically examining how social structure and contextual factors affect how people perceive and rationalize injustice, as well as the emotional, cognitive and legal processes involved in responses to injustice. For example, she challenged the notion that women are always more likely to perceive gender discrimination than are men, developing a theoretical model that explained how occupational structure affected perceptions of gender bias. Her work on violence against women demonstrates the role of structural and contextual factors on women’s responses to sexual violence and on re-victimization. Carried out in a rigorous way theoretically and methodologically, her work contributes to understanding and perhaps solving some of our most pressing social problems.

Jennifer McDowell

ovprweb on March 22, 2016

Creative Research Award 2016

Jennifer McDowell, professor of psychology, is an outstanding researcher who has dedicated much of her professional career to the study of cognition and brain function in healthy humans as well as those with psychiatric disorders. She integrates behavioral and multi-modal brain imaging methods, including electroencephalogram and functional magnetic resonance imaging, to provide comprehensive understanding of cognitive problems and what may be done to treat them. McDowell also conducted a series of methodologically sophisticated studies that documented the nature of cognitive control deficits in people with schizophrenia and their relatives using a particularly informative model based on eye movement performance. She has published scholarly papers in top journals on cognitive control deficits. These studies demonstrate that impaired cognitive control in schizophrenia is a core feature of the disorder, which may ultimately result in a change of the diagnostic standard or provide a target for functional rehabilitation.

Steve Kogan

ovprweb on March 22, 2016

William A. Owens Creative Research Award 2020

Steven M. Kogan is the UGA Athletic Foundation Professor of Human Development in the department of human development and family science in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences. Kogan’s research investigates important stressors that drive risky behaviors and mental health challenges among rural, Southern adolescent and young-adult African Americans, and then translates these findings into evidence-based family intervention projects. He undertakes longitudinal, quantitative modeling of the mechanisms that drive risky behavior across multiple levels and across time. Kogan’s research documents how community, family, genetic and psychological risk factors affect the well-being of young African Americans in general, and young men in particular. His recent research examines whether family-centered interventions could be more effective if timed and implemented at crucial developmental transition points, creating real-world public health benefits by reducing risky behavior and substance abuse.

Previous Award

Creative Research Medal 2016

Joshua Miller

on March 2, 2016

William A. Owens Creative Research Award 2018

Joshua D. Miller, professor and director of clinical training in the Department of Psychology, has played a leading role in developing, testing and advocating a new model of understanding personality disorders. Mental health professionals have struggled to treat patients with psychopathy and narcissism. His research helped demonstrate that these personality disorders are “built” from the same five basic components found in “normal” personality and that these disorders represent configurations of these traits that are problematic because of their extremity and/or inflexibility. Many clinicians prefer this approach because it provides more focused tools with greater therapeutic potential. His influential research over the last 15 years helped lay the groundwork for changes in the official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition. His research on narcissism, moreover, identified two distinct dimensions (grandiose and vulnerable) of this personality disorder that differ in their development, interpersonal behavior, underlying traits and outcomes—and require differentiated treatments to be effective.

Previous award

Creative Research Medal 2011