On July 18, the Neurosciences Research Center (CIN) of the University of Costa Rica (UCR) received the “Premio Rubén Ardila a la Investigación Científica en Psicología [Rubén Ardila Award for Scientific Research in Psychology], awarded by the Foundation for the Advancement of Psychology within the framework of the Interamerican Congress on Psychology, sponsored by the Interamerican Society of Psychology, among other organizations.
https://sipsych.org/ The "Rubén Ardila Award for Scientific Research in Psychology" was received by Dr. Jaime Fornaguera on behalf of CIN, during the 37th Interamerican Congress of Psychology (CIPCUBA 2019), at the Convention Center in Havana, Cuba.
On July 18, the Center for Research in Neurosciences (CIN) of the University of Costa Rica (UCR) received the "Rubén Ardila Award for Scientific Research in Psychology", conferred by the Foundation for the Advancement of Psychology in the framework of the Inter-American Congress of Psychology, sponsored by the Interamerican Society of Psychology, among other organizations.
In previous years, the award was only given to psychologists who individually made great contributions to the scientific research of the field.
This year marked the first time the award for the category of Groups was opened since science, increasingly, requires the incorporation of groups to have a greater impact on academic society and society in general.
It is especially significant that the first year that the award is granted to the Groups category, the research center of UCR gets to be the honoree.
About this, the director of CIN, Dr. Jaime Fornaguera-Trías, explained that throughout the 20 years of existence of the Program and the Center for Research in Neurosciences, approximately 61% of the researchers belong in the Psychology field. Currently, psychologists represent 45% of researchers who have active projects at CIN. Researchers from dentistry, biology, engineering, and medicine also participate.
In this sense, Dr. Fornaguera stated: “I think it is very important that we had participated in this call to demonstrate that psychology and other areas of knowledge can work together. Typically, psychology conferences are held for psychologists and neuroscience conferences for neuroscientists; practically no activities are promoted where both areas of knowledge coincide in the same space.”
“With our work, we also prove that there are other areas conducive for psychology students to be included. In fact, of the more than 210 assistants with whom the CIN has counted throughout its history, almost 40% are those from the psychology field, and then those from biology constitute 20% of the total,” said the neuroscientist.
The award was presented within the framework of the 37th Interamerican Congress of Psychology (CIPCUBA 2019), from July 15 to 19, 2019 at the Convention Center in Havana, Cuba.
Upon receiving the award, the director of CIN made a presentation of the different research projects the center is involved with, and a description of the scientific team that develops these projects.
Dr. Fornaguera stressed that this presentation about the scientific research work carried out by CIN attracted attention and received praise from several personalities attending the congress.
Among them, Dr. Carlos Zalaquett, current president of the Interamerican Society of Psychology, the outgoing president of this society, Dr. Sandra Luna, and Rubén Ardila himself, renowned Latin American psychologist of Colombian origin, whose name the award bears.
In addition to this international presentation of the important research work carried out by the UCR through CIN, the center received recognition, and will appear on the website of the Interamerican Society of Psychology (Sociedad Interamericana de Psicología) as the first scientific team receiving the award.
The "Rubén Ardila Award for Scientific Research in Psychology" aims to specifically recognize the work done in scientific research and is awarded every two years to a psychologist in the individual category and from now on, to a group of researchers in the category of Group.
It is awarded for work of excellence carried out using the scientific methodology in both basic and applied research.
Upon receiving the “Rubén Ardila Award for Scientific Research in Psychology”, Dr. Jaime Fornaguera, Director of CIN, revealed the different research projects developed by that center.
