Dr. Dolcos is a Full Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), which he joined in 2010. UIUC has been systematically in the top 10 public universities in the USA and its Psychology program is also among the finest in the country (historically, in top 5-10), in close competition with those from Yale, Princeton, and Harvard. Prof. Dolcos is also a full-time faculty member of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, as well as a member of the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. Dr. Dolcos performed his Ph.D. research in cognitive and affective neurosciences at the University of Alberta (top 5 in Canada) and Duke University (top 10 in the USA), where he also received his postdoctoral training  in cognitive, affective, and clinical neurosciences. Prof. Dolcos joined the University of Illinois, following an initial independent position as Assistant Professor in the University of Alberta’s Department of Psychiatry. Before immigrating to North America in 1999, Dr. Dolcos has obtained Bachelor’s degrees in Biology and Psychology, as well as a Master’s degree in Neurobiology from The University of Bucharest.  [

Awards. Throughout his career, Dr. Dolcos has received numerous institutional, national, and international awards – see below examples of awards received at various career stages (Canada & USA):

1999-2003 Chia PhD Scholarship for Superior International Students. University of Alberta.

2002  Brain Camp Fellowship to the International Kavli Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience.

2002-2003 Dissertation Fellowship. University of Alberta.

2006-2007 Post-Doc Fellowship. Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

2006  Cermak Award for Early Contributions to Research. Memory Disorders Research Society.

2007 Young Investigator Award. Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (formerly, NARSAD).

2008  CPRF Research Award. Canadian Psychiatric Research Foundation.

2008  CIHR-Wyeth Fellowship. Canadian Institutes of Health Research/Wyeth Pharmaceutical.

2012  Best Paper Award for review paper published in the Journal of Cognitive Psychology (2011).

2013 Frontiers Popularity Award for leading Special Issue: “The Impact of Emotion on Cognition – Dissociating between Enhancing and Impairing Effects”.

2014 & 2019 Arnold O. Beckman Research Award. University of Illinois Campus Research Board.

2016 Endowed Scholarship: Helen Corley Petit Scholar, LAS College, University of Illinois.

2017 & 2022 Endowed Professorial Scholarship: Emanuel Donchin Professorial Scholar in Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois.

Publications and Impact. Dr. Dolcos has published extensively with a large network of over 200 collaborators: total of >125 manuscripts, including >15 review articles, 6 book chapters, and 3 books. The vast majority of his publications are in Q1 and Q2 journals, of which >20 are in journals ranked among the top 10 in their own Web of Science subdomain/category (e.g., Neuron, Neuroimage, Human Brain Mapping, Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, Emotion, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, American Journal of Psychiatry). His research is also impactful, amassing >15,000 total citations as of July 2025 ((h-index: 55, i10-index: 108; according to http://www.scholar.google.com.

Editorial and Other Services to the Field. During the past 20 years, Dr. Dolcos has been very actively serving the field, through editorial, review, and other leadership activities. Since 2002, he has reviewed hundreds of manuscripts for more than 70 journals, and he has served as an Associate Editor for three Q1 journals (Emotion, Psychophysiology, and Frontiers in Psychology). Moreover, Dr. Dolcos is currently the Chief Editor of the Emotion Science section of Frontiers in Psychology, which is the largest and most cited journal in its field. Dr. Dolcos has started his involvement with this journal in 2011, when he organized the first and arguably the most popular Research Topic (RT) of the journal. With >60 contributing papers, summarized in a review and compiled in an edited book (Dolcos, Wang, & Mather, 2014 & 2015, respectively), this special issue has been at the top of popularity among the Frontiers RTs.