S. Mason Garrison awarded Editors’ Choice Award for outstanding paper 

Assistant Professor of Psychology S. Mason Garrison and former Wake Forest students Xuanyu Lyu (MA ’23) and Rachel Good (’22, MA ’24) received Behavior Genetics’ Editors’ Choice Award, an honor given to the previous year’s outstanding behavior genetics study. Their paper, “Detecting mtDNA Effects with an Extended Pedigree Model: An Analysis of Statistical Power and Estimation Bias,” examines the impact of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) on genetic and genomic processes that shape behavior in humans and other species.  

Behavior Genetics is published in cooperation with the Behavior Genetics Association and serves as a leading international journal dedicated to advancing the understanding of how genetic and genomic processes shape behavior. “Being nominated by people I respect meant a lot, and then actually winning felt incredibly affirming,” said Garrison. 

Equally affirming for Garrison were the significant contributions by her former students. “Xuanyu led the extensive simulation and analytic work behind the paper, really establishing when the model works, how much data it needs, and where it can go wrong,” said Garrison. “The published paper also reflects the contributions of Rachel Good, Wake Forest graduate student, and Sarah Carroll, Michigan State University graduate student.”

The paper became a centerpiece of Garrison’s tenure dossier. It grew out of a grant she wrote with co-researchers Mike Hunter and Alex Burt that was later funded by the National Institute on Aging to study the contribution of mitochondrial DNA to Alzheimer’s disease and other conditions of aging. Garrison added, “Seeing a student’s master’s thesis grow into what I consider the crown jewel of that larger body of work is a huge part of why I’m proud of it.”  

Garrison joined Wake Forest in 2019. Her two research streams focus on methodological advancements in biometrically informed designs and applications to understanding health inequity and individual differences.