Congratulations to Dahna Choi on Her Successful PhD Defense

We warmly congratulate Dahna Choi on the successful defense of her PhD thesis “Towards a Holistic Understanding of Adaptive Social Functioning: Disentangling Empathy and Perspective-Taking Across Risk States and Manifest Affective Disorders.” Her doctoral research in the realm of the International Research Training Group “Risks and Pathomechanisms of Affective Disorders”  focused on social affect and cognition in affective disorders, with a particular emphasis on empathy and perspective-taking across different risk and disorder states.

Using a multimodal approach integrating behavioral measures, self-report data, and neuroimaging analyses, she developed novel theoretical perspectives on empathic distress, compassion, and self–other processing. Her work advances our understanding of social functioning in affective disorders and provides important directions for future research and clinical applications.

We congratulate Dahna on this important milestone and wish her all the best for her future career!