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Psychology Professor Claudia González-Vallejo has been selected to serve as program director for the Decision, Risk, and Management Sciences Program at the National Science Foundation.

The NSF appointment is enabled through the Intergovernmental Personnel Act, which allows for the temporary assignment of skilled personnel between the federal government and state and local governments, colleges and universities, Indian tribal governments, federally funded research and development centers, and other eligible organizations.

González-Vallejo also was of the , an international community of scholars involved in the experimental study of cognition, in 2022. The society was created nearly 60 years ago and has grown to include over 4,300 scientists. Fellowship status occurs by nomination with letters of support from renowned scientists who recognize the scientific contributions of a member.

"The Fellows program recognizes members who demonstrate clear evidence of independent scholarship, active engagement in methodologically rigorous and theoretically interesting high level research, and indications of an imminent national/international reputation for excellence in the psychological sciences," according to the .

González-Vallejo joined the Psychology Department in the College of Arts and Sciences at ÃÛèÖÊÓƵ in 1996. Her research expands areas of judgment and decision-making sciences including judgment accuracy, pre-decisional dynamic processes underlying decision difficulty, and mathematical models of choice behavior. She has published in premier journals in psychology, including Psychological Review and she is also on the editorial board of prestigious journals including Decision, Decision Analysis, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, and Journal of Mathematical Psychology. She has also served at the National Institutes of Health as a permanent member of the scientific review panel of the Cognition and Perception study section.

González-Vallejo earned a Master of International Affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and a Ph.D. in cognitive and quantitative psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has prior experience in international affairs working for the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), and public policy working for the Center for Policy Research at the Rockefeller College, SUNY at Albany. She was also the recipient of a prestigious award by the National Academies of Sciences and worked for the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations at the State Department as a Jefferson Science Fellow in 2019-2020. She also served at the National Science Foundation under the Visiting Scientist, Engineer, and Educator Program (VSEE).

How has González-Vallejo been putting her academic expertise to use in the policy arena, having been serving in various roles in the nation's capital for the past several years?

Q&A with Claudia González-Vallejo

Q: You’ve spent several years in Washington, D.C., the public policy center of the United States. Why is it important to have faculty serving in roles at our top research and granting agencies?

A: I have served both at the U.S. State Department and the National Science Foundation via fellowships and awards. The contribution of scientific knowledge and expertise to the formulation and implementation of U.S. government policy is well recognized. Government agencies have thus established mechanisms for bringing scientists onboard to aid in the understanding of complex issues, manage programs, and provide channel