Who I am
Hi, my name is Nick and I am a first-year Master’s in Psychiatry Research student at Dalhousie University. My goal is to pursue a doctorate in Clinical Psychology so I can practice and continue research. I am interested in youth anxiety, psychiatric epidemiology, attention, and the philosophy of psychology (in order of current priority). You can see my CV here.
What I’m working on
Currently, I am pursuing a Master’s in Psychiatry Research at Dalhousie University. I am being supervised by Dr. Sandra Meier (Canada Research Chair in Developmental Psychopathology and Youth Mental Health) and Dr. JianLi Wang (CIHR Research Chair on Health Data Science and Innovation). We are using smartphone mobile sensing (e.g., GPS; light/noise sensors) to objectively compare anxiety-related behaviours (sleep, sociability, and exercise) in youth and adults. I am developing skills in structural equation modelling, R-programming, anxiety assessment, science communication, ethics proposal writing, and more.
I’m also the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Positive Psychology Association’s CPPA Students Medium blog, where every semester I edit student-written (and reviewed) psychology blogs as a part of the CPPA’s Student Ambassador program.
What I did before
In the spring of 2022, I graduated from Dalhousie University with a Bachelor’s of Science with First Class Honours in Psychology and Philosophy. In psychology, I focused on clinical, cognitive, and experimental psychology. In philosophy, I focused on metaphysics and epistemology as applied to psychology and the philosophy of science. I developed skills in experimental design, meta-analysis, R-programming, and scientific writing.
My honours thesis (supervised by Dr. Raymond M. Klein and PhD student Richard S. Drake) was on the attentional control of gaze-cuing. Intuitively, we found that we reflexively look where others are looking . . . AND we deliberately look where others are looking. Our paper has recently been accepted for publication by the Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology!
In philosophy, I focused on metaphysics, epistemology, and the history of philosophy, centering my classes around problems in the philosophy of psychology and the philosophy of science more broadly. Three professors that had a major influence on me are Dr. Michael Hymers (a metaphysician and ordinary language philosopher), Dr. Tyler Hildebrand (a metaphysician specializing in natural laws), and Dr. Duncan MacIntosh (a rational decision theorist). In their classes, I’ve written about everything from free will to probabilistic-time-limited natural necessity to psychiatric drugs for soldiers with moral-injury-induced PTSD.
In the summer of 2022, I was fortunate to get a research award from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) so I could work with Dr. Klein and Dr. Meier prior to starting my Master’s degree. Certainly the highlight of the summer was co-organizing the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Science 2022 Annual Meeting in Halifax, Nova Scotia (CSBBCS 2022) with Dr. Klein, Dr. Aaron Newman (Dal Dept. of Psych & Neuro Chair), Dr. Nicole Conrad (SMU Dept. of Psych Chair) and Dr. Patrick Carolan (SMU Prof. of Psych).
Alongside my studies, I volunteer extensively. At the start of my second year, I joined the Klein Lab to study attention, assisting in pilot-testing, recruitment, literature review, meta-analysis, database management, and social media management. For three years, I volunteered with the Dalhousie Association of Psychology Students, running writing workshops, info seminars, graduate program expos, a psychoanalysis book club, Q&A sessions, and more.
The purpose of this website
This is my personal website, where I will focus on creating content related to my academic life. This includes my CV, presentations, publications, etc. I also write two blogs: On Things Psychological is where I write about topics in psychology and psychiatry; Subject Matter Unknown is where I write about current events, philosophical topics that are unrelated to psychology, and more.
If you would like to contact me directly, please visit my Contact Me page (at the link or in the menu at the top of your screen).