The Royal Society of New Zealand awarded Prof. Ulf-Dietrich Reips with a three year Catalyst Leaders Julius von Haast Fellowship “Digital interventions for brain health and wellbeing” (2026-2028), in collaboration with the local team around Prof. Valery Feigin at Auckland University of Technology. 🍾

The Catalyst International Leader Fellowship supports incoming targeted international fellowships for exceptional individuals. The successful Leader is recognised for excellence in their area or areas of expertise, has the ability to support an increase in New Zealand’s capability in their area of expertise, and is internationally recognised.

The International Leader Fellowships are intended to support international fellows who can have a catalytic impact on New Zealand science capabilities and promote the importance of international cooperation in science. The Royal Society of New Zealand collaborates with the Humboldt Foundation of Germany on these international research awards.

The Association for Psychological Science (APS) has officially announced that Ulf-Dietrich Reips will be Editor-in-Chief of the high impact journal* Psychological Science in the Public Interest (PSPI) from July 1, 2025 to the end of 2028. After having served as consulting editor for other important journals such as Behavior Research Methods (BRM) and Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications and having founded the International Journal of Internet Science (IJIS), he is now taking on this new challenge.

Reips will be the first editor of PSPI coming from outside of North America. On behalf of the whole team, we would like to congratulate Prof Reips on this achievement! 🍾

There will be an interview with him on his vision and plans for the editorial board of PSPI in the coming weeks. You can also find a German press release on the University of Konstanz website.

*Clarivate’s Web of Science ranks the journal No. 1 of 219 about Psychology, multidisciplinary, in its Journal Citation Reports, with a Journal Citation Indicator (JCI) of 7.27 and a Journal Impact Factor, JIF, of 18.2. Scopus ranks the journal No. 1 out of 307 in Psychology, miscellaneous, with an SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) of 9.887 and No. 2 in Psychology (all) with a CiteScore of 44.800.

A recent study shows that about one in five patients released from intensive care will develop symptoms of PTSD during the first year after ICU, such as flashbacks, trouble sleeping or nightmares. While surviving serious illness is great, being left with new psychological symptoms is quite unfortunate.

As these symptoms are often discussed with general practitioners (GPs) rather than mental health professionals, the new PICTURE study by Gensinchen et al. (2025, co-authored by Ulf-Dietrich Reips) investigates the effectiveness of a short-term variant of narrative exposure therapy conducted by GPs. The results of this randomized control trial paint the picture of a very promising new intervention! Read the article yourself here: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2024-082092 or get an overview in one of the media posts about this study by the LMU Munich or BMJ Group.

The Journal of Perceptual Imaging publishes papers on topics such as cognitive effects, perception, and imaging. From time to time it also publishes special issues. In a special issue on Remote Research in the Perceptional and Cognitive Sciences an article on the influence of facial cues in avatars was published by iscience team member Yury Shevchenko and Ulf-Dietrich Reips, along with their former Master student Jakob Heisenstein, whose Master thesis was the basis for the piece. More recently, in February 2025, Maria Rosa Miccoli and Ulf-Dietrich Reips published an article on exact versus conceptual replication in the same journal!🍾💭

You can find the articles below – we highly reccommend you check them out!

Shevchenko, Y., Heisenstein, J., & Reips, U.-D. (2024). How do avatars make a positive impression: The effect of facial cues on avatar evaluation. Journal of Perceptual Imaging, 7, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.2352/j.percept.imaging.2024.7.000406

Miccoli, M. R., & Reips, U.-D. (2025). Exact versus conceptual replication: Internet-based research investigating the replicability of cognitive effects. Journal of Perceptual Imaging, 7. https://doi.org/10.2352/j.percept.imaging.2025.7.000408