Michael Allen PhD

Dr. Allen received an NSF pre-doctoral fellowship to study the effects of nitric oxide on eyeblink conditioning. After completing his Ph.D. in Neural Science and Psychology at Indiana University, Dr. Allen served as a post-doctoral researcher at the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience (CMBN) at Rutgers University-Newark. This work involved lesion and drug studies that explored the predictions of computational models of the cerebellum and hippocampus. He also served a year as a Visiting Professor at the College of Charleston before arriving at the University of Northern Colorado in 2003. In addition to teaching and research, Dr Allen has held various leadership positions in UNC’s Faculty Senate including Chair of the Academic Policies Committee (APC) and Elections Chair. In the School of Psychological Sciences, Dr. Allen has chaired several search committees and served as the Interim Director of the School of Psychological Sciences in 2016-2017. Dr. Allen is also a Fellow of the International Stress and Behavior Society.

Dr. Allen teaches a variety of courses both in the classroom and online. These courses include introductory psychology, learning, motivation, physiological psychology at the undergraduate level and learning, brain, and education, and a special topics class on stress and anxiety at the graduate level. Dr. Allen’s training in behavioral neuroscience has included both animal and human studies of learning and memory. Dr. Allen’s current research interests involve testing a learning diathesis model of anxiety disorders in collaboration with colleagues at the Stress and Motivated Behavior Institute (SMBI) and the Dept. of Veterans Affairs (VA).