BAEF Fellowship for two PhD Students in Cognitive Psychology and Neuropsychology

Published on 19 May 2021
Written by Valery Saintghislain
 Wivine Blekic and Nellia Belliaert, PhD students at the Faculty of Psychology and Education (FPSE), will spend a year at Columbia University and Yale University courtesy of a fellowship from the Belgian American Educational Foundation (BAEF). Wivine Blekic and Nellia Bellaert, two PhD students from the Cognitive Psychology and Neuropsychology Unit, directed by Prof. Laurent, […]

 Wivine Blekic and Nellia Belliaert, PhD students at the Faculty of Psychology and Education (FPSE), will spend a year at Columbia University and Yale University courtesy of a fellowship from the Belgian American Educational Foundation (BAEF).

Wivine Blekic and Nellia Bellaert, two PhD students from the Cognitive Psychology and Neuropsychology Unit, directed by Prof. Laurent, Lefebvre, have just been informed that they have each been awarded a fellowship by the Belgian American Educational Foundation (BAEF).The awarding of these two prestigious fellowships within the same department (a first for the FPSE, but also for UMONS on the whole!) will enable the researchers concerned to hone their scientific careers by working in the laboratories of two world-renowned American universities (Columbia and Yale) for one year.

Nellia Bellaert, a former FPSE student, obtained a BAEF doctoral fellowship for Yale, where she will be assigned to the Yale Child Study Center laboratory to work on brain mechanisms related to irritability and depression in children and adolescents.

As for Wivine Blekic, she has been awarded a post-doctoral fellowship that will allow her to continue her research on post-traumatic stress for one year at Columbia University.

There, in the Department of Emergency Medicine, Ms Blekic will work with intensive care physicians to identify the mechanisms of burn-out and post-traumatic stress.  She had already obtained a FRESH grant from the FNRS.

It should be noted that the doctorates of these two researchers are being conducted under the supervision of Prof. Mandy Rossignol.

As a reminder, the Belgian American Educational Foundation is a philanthropic association founded in 1920 by the then President H. Hoover.  For more than a century, it has enabled nearly 4,000 Belgians and 1,000 Americans to complete their academic and scientific careers in partner universities on both sides of the Atlantic.

For more information, visit: https://baef.be/