The winner of this year's Schmeidler Outstanding Student Award is PA Student Member David Marcusson-Clavertz. This annual award goes to a student who excels academically and makes early contributions to the field through conference presentations, research or involvement in one or more of the organizations of the field, and/or who has overcome practical difficulties to study parapsychology.

David Marcusson-Clavertz, currently a post-doctoral fellow at the prestigious Penn State University, has already made important contributions to psychology and parapsychology. Regarding the former, he has advanced our understanding of mind wandering, particulartly with respect to its interactions with procedures to affect consciousness such as ganzfeld, and the dispositions to experience alterations of consciousness of dissociation and hypnotizability.

With respecto to parapsychology, he was instrumental in setting up a ganzfeld set-up at CERCAP (Center for Research on Consciousness and Anomalous Psychology) at Lund University and conducting studies with that method. He has co-authored publications investigating the relation of dissociation and hypnotizability to precognition and telepathy, among others. Considering his considerable knowledge of the field and his statistical and methodological expertise, he was invited to be a co-author to the authoritative Parapsychology: A Handbook for the 21st Century, a task he performed admirably. His anchoring in mainstream psychology allied to his research rigor can only help advance the status of parapsychology.

More information about the PA's annual awards can be found at: http://www.parapsych.org/section/27/awards.aspx.