Bettina Shapira, PhD
Department Chair, Department of Psychology
13
UPDATES Department
Happy New Year!
I hope you enjoyed the Holiday Break.
I am very excited to share with you that Dr. Patrick McNamara, along with his
colleague Dr. Jordan Grafman from Northwestern School of Medicine, was
awarded a significant grant from the Templeton Foundation. The title of this 3-year,
6.4-million-dollar project is The cognitive neuroscience of religious cognition.
NCU will approximately receive 1.7-million-dollars of the grant money.
As per Dr. McNamara:
There are 3 major "arms" of the project. The first arm involves a curated grant
competition wherein Dr. Grafman and I will call for and evaluate grant proposals
from other researchers on the brain and religion topic area. They expect to
award some 3 million dollars to at least 8-10 research teams who pass rigorous
scientific review. The work of these research teams will catalyze overall scientific
development in this new emerging field of the cognitive neuroscience of religion.
