The Parapsychological Association is pleased to announce two awardees of this year's Robert L. Morris Student Travel Fund grant: Moritz Dechamps & Marissa Jakob

Moritz Dechamps: Moritz's interest revolves around mind-matter-interactions. He is studying the connection of the mental and the physical world primarily by conducting micro-PK experiments. This means, he is researching the effects of conscious observers on events produced by random number generators. Moritz has found that specific mindsets of the subjects produce corresponding non-random deviations in the device’s output, if this output is meaningful to the participant. For his convention presentation, he is further investigating the temporal change and oscillating nature of this interaction. Why is replicating psi effects such a problem? Are there psychological or physical factors at work that prohibit the occurrence of a truly verifiable effect? Can we still find anomalies in the data and with what methods?

Marissa Jakob: For more than six years, Marissa has been following and participating in the field of parapsychological research, starting with an internship on precognition with Prof. Markus Maier in her second bachelor-semester at the LMU of Munich. In her bachelor- and master-thesis, she focused on micro-PK. She is working as a Ph.D. student studying the connection of different personality-variables as well as concepts from clinical psychology and micro-PK-effects.  The central question of her PA convention presentation is if and how unconscious motives can be related to micro-PK and how these effects develop over time. As decline-effects are very common in parapsychological research,she is presenting methods to distinguish systematic patterns in sequences from randomness apart from the final average value.

The Parapsychological Association established the Robert L. Morris Student Travel Fund in 2005 after receiving a generous donation from Joanna Morris in a memorial of her late husband, who held the Koestler Chair of Parapsychology from 1985 to 2004. The PA Board of Directors considered how best to use this donation and believed that Bob Morris would have most liked for the funds to be used to encourage student participation in the PA.

Your continued support will extend the life of this fund. If you would like to make a contribution, please visit our Support Page and note the "Student Travel Fund" when sending your donation.