Congratualtions to both Konstantinos Mantantzis and Edika Quispe-Torreblanca who have been awarded the Faculty of Science, Engineering, and Medicine PhD Thesis Prize 2019 in Psychology.

The members of the Judging Panel were very impressed by extremely high quality of the theses which all investigated topics that are highly relevant to important issues in society. The studies were conducted with the highest level of methodological rigour and analytic sophistication and the quality of write-up was exceptional.

Kostas submitted his PhD thesis entitled “Psychobiology of Emotion-Cognition Interactions in Ageing” on 7^th September 2018 and had his viva on 23^rd November 2018 which he passed with no corrections. Kostas’s PhD project focused on examining the physiological underpinnings of emotion-cognition interactions in ageing and, specifically, the role of glucose availability and overall Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) functionality. The Judging Panel was very impressed by the originality and quality of his PhD research as well as by the high level of publications that have resulted from his PhD work. The thesis by Kostas had an edge in that he derived important research questions for experiments that are not so obvious at first sight but were carefully motivated by the literature. To creatively generate innovative research questions is an important but difficult part of scientific endeavor and therefore, the Panel commended the thesis by Kostas for doing just that so beautifully.

Edika submitted her PhD thesis entitled “Essays on Individual Decision Making in the Field” on 24^th September 2018 and had her viva on 10^th December 2018 which she also passed with no corrections. In the words of her internal examiner, Edika’s “work was sterling in every way. She tested great ideas, and did so using a remarkable degree of empirical care and statistical rigour.” The Judging Panel also believes that her thesis makes a huge contribution methodologically, theoretically, and empirically as the work is interdisciplinary and covers several different topics and literatures. The impact of the resulting papers (on police misconduct and on credit-card repayment behaviour) is certainly to be substantial, especially as the research has appeared in the very top journals (Nature Human Behaviour and Management Science).