We are not currently recruiting honors thesis students for 24-25.

If you are interested in joining the lab as a PSYC 99 or 199 research assistant (preferred) or volunteer research assistant, please contact the lab at oveislab@gmail.com.

For prospective Ph.D. students: I will not be able to take on a new primary advisee in the 24-25 application cycle (i.e., starting the Ph.D. program in Fall 2025).

In years when I am able to consider new primary advisees, I am most interested in advising someone who is interested in studying one or more of the following: empathy and compassion; (intrapersonal and/or interpersonal) emotion regulation; positive emotions.

Some recommended features of statements of purpose:

(1) State the general research question or area that you’re most interested in pursuing, and how you came to be interested in the topic. Talk about the steps you’ve taken to prepare for a Ph.D., and tell how your recent activities (e.g., research pursued, degree programs) relate to your interest in pursuing a Ph.D.

(2) Give a sense of the reading that you’ve done relevant to what you want to study. What are the most exciting topics, papers, or methodologies and why? Which non-UCSD papers/authors have inspired you?

(3) Write about your current research skill set and how you acquired it. Describe any key experiences relevant to conducting Ph.D. research. If discussing research experience, it can be informative to discuss your role in the research, as well as what you learned about the research question, topic, and/or research process.

(4) Explain why you fit with this specific program and potential advisor(s). Say which particular research topic(s) in this lab is/are most exciting to you going forward. Give a sense of the type of questions or projects that you can envision working on with me, and why your skills and interests would make for a great fit. Identify a paper written by me that connects well with your interests, and say why (e.g., maybe the topic/research questions align with your interests; maybe the methods would be useful for examining a different research question; maybe the findings spark ideas for pursuing different questions). Finally, it can be helpful to say if there are any methods that you are particularly interested in using/learning in the future (e.g., in-lab and online experiments; dyadic/group interaction studies involving psychophysiological measurements; experience sampling methods).

(5) Our Ph.D. students are encouraged to work with multiple faculty members. Identify 1-2 other Rady faculty who you might also work with and tell how your interests intersect with their work. Other UCSD Rady management faculty are Profs Elizabeth Campbell, Craig McKenzie, Tage Rai, Yuval Rottenstreich, and Pamela Smith. Faculty in our other Rady behavioral groups—behavioral marketing and economics—also have close ties with our Ph.D. students.