We are happy to welcome Assistant Professor Dominik Mischkowski to the Department of Psychology faculty! Dr. Mischkowski is primarily affiliated with the Social-Personality area.
Can you briefly share your academic and professional background that led you to the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign?
I started graduate school as a PhD student in Social Psychology at the University of Michigan but then moved with my advisor to the Social Psychology program at Ohio State University. At OSU, I received my PhD in Psychology in 2015. During graduate school at OSU, I developed my current research interest in how physical and psychological pain are interconnected on the psychological and neuronal levels. However, I still lacked the proper methodological expertise to fully probe this interconnection. Consequently, I completed a 2-year postdoc at the National Institutes of Health, in a research center dedicated to human and animal research dedicated to the neuroscience of pain. In this center, I learned how to image pain using fMRI, which considerably extended my “methodological toolbox.” After six years at the Ohio University, first as a visiting and then as a tenure-track Assistant Professor, I just started as a brand-new Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois!
Looking ahead, what do you hope to achieve during your time at UIUC's Department of Psychology? Are there any long-term goals you're aiming for?
My long-term goal is to conduct the best science I can conduct, while training the future generation of my research field. In the psychology department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I thus plan to establish a collaborative, grant-funded, and publishing lab. In this lab, I plan to provide graduate and undergraduate students the opportunity to get involved in research on psychological and physical pain, including using painkiller to treat both phenomena. Particularly important to me are my three graduate students that moved from Ohio University with me; it is my goal to make sure that they received adequate training to pursue their own, future research projects.
On a personal note, what do you enjoy doing outside of your academic and professional life? Any hobbies, interests, or experiences you'd like to share?
As it happens, I also have a life outside the lab! I enjoy exercising, art, music, and traveling. If you are lucky, you may even see me speeding around Champaign or Urbana on a red race bike! Aside from my family, in particular, my wife, my son Aidan, and my pets, my bike has a particularly prominent role in my life.
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