ASA - American Society on Aging

2008 Awards Programs
Recognizing Excellence in the Field of Aging

Award Winners

2008 ASA GRADUATE STUDENT RESEARCH AWARDS

ASA gratefully acknowledges the support of the AARP Andrus Foundation for the Graduate Student Research Award. The ASA Graduate Student Research Award is presented to graduate students for exceptional research relevant to aging and applicable to practice.

Zhen Cong

Los Angeles, CA

Zhen Cong is a PhD candidate at the Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California. She earned her BA at Xi’an Foreign Language University in 1997, and received her MS in the Institute for Population and Development Studies at Xi’an Jiaotong University in 2003.

Her academic interests focus on the relationship between intergenerational relationships and the well-being of individuals within the family. Particularly, her work takes an extended family perspective, based on the idea that the interactions between a parent and a child and their consequences can not be isolated from the interactions between that parent and the siblings of that child.

Currently, she is working on her dissertation entitled: “Children’s migration and the financial, social and psychological well-being of older adults in rural China”. She is currently a representative of the Task Force on Minority Issues in Gerontology of the Gerontological Society of America. She is committed to highlight the research concerning minority elders and the cultural diversity of aging.

Honorable Mention

Thomas M. Richardson, PhD, MBA

Rochester, New York

Thomas Richardson Dr. Richardson recently completed his PhD in Epidemiology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine in Dentistry. His dissertation entitled, “Depression and It’s Correlates Among Older Adults Accessing Aging Services,” was performed using a community-academic research partnership. He is also a physician assistant and has an MBA. Dr. Richardson is currently the Director of Research and Assistant Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Psychiatry.