Belinda Campos, Chicano/Latino studies associate professor, and Melody Dehghan, quantitative economics undergrad, are the School of Social Sciences 2017 recipients of the Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Research. Presented at the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program’s 24th annual symposium, the awards recognize Campos’s efforts to foster research among undergraduates, and Dehghan’s excellence in undergraduate research. The awards – which have been given to deserving faculty and students since 1997 – were presented to the recipients at the May 20 symposium which featured research presentations from students around campus.

Dehghan is a graduating senior in the school’s quantitative economics major. She’s currently completing an honors thesis – under the mentorship of Damon Clark, economics associate professor - on depression and education as part of the Economics Honors Program. Dehghan has served as a research assistant for David Neumark, economics professor, and as a student researcher for the University of Minnesota Summer Institute in Biostatistics. She’s currently doing independent research on Bayesian methods in statistics under the supervision of Michele Guindani, statistics associate professor. Dehghan has been a tutorial leader at the Learning Academic Resource Center and has volunteered at the Economics Learning Center.  Throughout her time at UCI, she has provided services to several on-campus organizations including the Actuary Society, the Center for Living Peace (as a statistics intern) and the Journal of Human Rights (as a copy editor).  Following graduation she will take a gap year to work in research or corporate finance, and then she plans on returning to graduate school to pursue a master's in statistics.

Belinda Campos joined the UCI Department of Chicano/Latino Studies in 2008 and is an integral member of the PRIME-LC faculty. Her work examines the role of culture and emotion in shaping social relationships and health outcomes. Her research has appeared in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology as well as in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, among others. She is a past recipient of the UROP Faculty Mentor of the Month award and the 2017 Social Sciences Dean’s Award for Outstanding Mentorship recipient.  A graduate in psychology from UC Santa Barbara, Campos received her Ph.D. in personality psychology from UC Berkeley. Prior to her arrival at UCI, Campos completed a two-year National Institutes of Mental Health postdoctoral fellowship in health psychology at UCLA and worked for two years as a postdoctoral researcher with UCLA’s Center for the Everyday Lives of Families. Her lab at UCI routinely offers training opportunities to undergraduate students in Chicano/Latino studies and psychology.  She also serves as a diligent mentor for students doing independent projects.  Just this quarter alone, she is working with 13 undergraduate students and 2 graduate students on independent study projects.