Awards

National Academies - 2012

American Association for the Advancement of Science

About James Goodson, Jr.

James Goodson, Jr. earned his B. A. in psychology in 1992 from the University of North Florida and his Ph.D. in psychology in 1998 from Cornell University. Following a two-year period as an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Cornell, he became an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of California-San Diego in 2000, where he was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2005. In 2007 he joined the Department of Biology at Indiana University, where he became a full professor in 2011.

Goodson was a prominent behavioral professor in the emerging field of animal social neuroendocrinology. New findings about the role of the nonapeptides in social behavior in rodents inspired in him the goal of discovering mechanisms responsible for species differences in major dimensions of social organization, especially sociality itself. One of his many accomplishments while at IU was to develop new testing paradigms for evaluating sociality in zebra finches and did the critical nonapeptide manipulation experiments to confirm the roles of mesoticin and of nonapeptide receptors in sociality.

Goodson was well respected and highly known throughout his career. In addition to his Frank A. Beach Award, he was made a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012.