The University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) has named Jodie Plumert, professor and chair of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, a Starch Faculty Fellow. Starch fellowships are five-year, renewable appointments, awarded to outstanding faculty in the college who conduct research primarily in psychological and human behavior problems in the field of communication.

Plumert’s research focuses on the development of spatial memory and communication and on the role of immature perceptual, motor, and cognitive skills in unintentional childhood injuries. Plumert is a co-leader of the Hank Virtual Environments Lab, which uses virtual environment technology to safely and systematically study perception-action problems with real-world consequences; and the Perceiving, Acting, and Thinking Lab, which studies how children and adults perceive, act, and think in the context of everyday problems such as crossing busy roads and finding missing objects.

Plumert received her Bachelor of Arts in psychology from Kalamazoo College in 1985 and her doctorate from the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota in 1990. She joined the UI faculty in 1990.