Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences

Psychology Alumni

Alumni Spotlights

This is a picture of Julie Michael Gettings.

Julie Michael Gettings, PhD, ’05 CLAS

Dr. Gettings is currently a pediatric psychologist within the Division of Endocrinology and Diabetes at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She works collaboratively with youth with diabetes and their families on improving adherence to diabetes management tasks, coping with chronic illness, improving family functioning surrounding illness management and treating symptoms of mental health disorders. She is also involved in clinical research with a particular focus on improving mental health screenings for youth with chronic illness. Prior to her current position, Dr. Gettings was the diabetes psychologist at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and served in a similar role.

While at Villanova, Gettings pursued a dual major in Psychology and Comprehensive Science and worked as a research assistant at Fox Chase Cancer Center. After graduation, she began a joint PhD program in Clinical and Biological/Health Psychology at University of Pittsburgh. She completed a clinical internship at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh and post-doctoral fellowships in pediatric psychology at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh and Johns Hopkins Children's Center.

This is a picture of Brian Anderson.

Brian Anderson, PhD, ’09 MS

When Dr. Anderson began the Master of Psychology program at Villanova University, he was a small-town kid with minimal exposure to the practice of science. However, he was fascinated by perception and quickly found Charles (Chip) Folk, PhD and his lab. He immediately started working with Dr. Folk, who later became his thesis advisor, collaborated with him on seven scientific papers. Dr. Anderson learned to think like a scientist at Villanova and met his wife of 10 years—and counting. After Villanova, Dr. Anderson earned a PhD in Psychological and Brain Sciences from Johns Hopkins University, studying under the late Steven Yantis, PhD. There he discovered a new way to break the psychological process goal-directed attention, which he had studied with Dr. Folk. His research resulted in a landmark study.

Dr. Anderson is an Assistant Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Texas A&M University, where he also serves as Director of Human Imaging for the department and Associate Editor for the journal Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics. He current lab team consists of three PhD students, a post-doctoral fellow and a lab manager. Their research focuses on how learning changes the way people see the world—not figuratively, but literally see the world by measuring eye movements and brain activity—and is funded by grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation. In 2009, Dr. Anderson won the Ward Thesis award and won the Psychonomic Society Steven Yantis Early Career Award in 2019—recognizing significant scientific contributions of Members and Fellows early in their research career.