Em Matsuno, second-year assistant professor of counseling and counseling psychology at Arizona State University (CCSP, Ph.D., Counseling Psychology, ’19), has been recognized by ASU’s College of Integrative Sciences and Arts with the Outstanding Faculty Research Award for an early-stage scholar.
Earlier this year, Matsuno won a $2.2 million R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health; as well as a $46,000 seed grant from the Institute for Mental Health Research, to conduct a pilot study in collaboration with the Phoenix Children’s Hospital gender support program.
Matsuno is a principal investigator on the R01 grant project to better understand the role of resilience in addressing mental health disparities for transgender and gender-diverse individuals. It is funded under NIH’s National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. Only about 20% of R01 grant applications are funded, according to the NIH website. As a result, the average age of a first-time principal investigator is 44, noted Matsuno, who is more than a decade younger. Investigators may also apply to extend R01 grants, to scale up or expand the work, and the applicant success rate for those awards is about 40%.
Em Matsuno is an assistant professor in counseling and counseling psychology. Their research interests focus on trans and nonbinary minority stress and resilience using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Their main goal is to develop and test interventions to decease negative mental health outcomes and increase wellbeing among trans and nonbinary people. Dr. Matsuno will be accepting a PhD student this application cycle.
