About

Oliver Boxell B.A., M.A., M.S., Ph.D., A.F.H.E.A., L.M.H.C.P., N.C.C. is currently Assistant Professor of Counseling and Human Development at the University of Rochester in the Margaret Warner School. He was previously Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull Fellow in the same department, where he also completed his Ph.D. in Counseling and Human Development and graduated with an M.S. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling (both CACREP accredited). Oliver also has secondary affiliations with the University of Rochester's Artificial Intelligence Horizons Institute, Center for Learning in the Digital Age, and is an affiliated Core Investigator in the Office of Health Equity Research in the Medical School. Oliver has held a Ph.D. in Cognitive Science from the University of Potsdam since 2014, as well as a master's degree in Psycholinguistics and Neuroscience of Language from the University of Essex, England and an undergraduate degree in Linguistics from the University of York, England.   

Clinically, Oliver spent a year as a clinical intern in the Psychiatry Department of Strong Memorial Hospital, part of the University of Rochester Medical School. He also spent around two years working with patients at the Rochester Deep Structure Psychotherapy Clinic as part of the Cleveland Emotional Health Network. Oliver is a board certified counselor, holding the National Certified Counselor (N.C.C.) credential from the National Board for Certified Counselors.

As a cognitive neuroscientist, his research focus is on the relationship between rules-based algorithms for how neural circuits generate and compile electromagnetic oscillations into representational "deep structures," and the processing thereof, to unify all human neurocognitive faculties. As a counseling and human development researcher, he uses the deep structural mechanisms to understand developmental processes, generate psychometric instruments, and to integrate and augment traditional psychotherapy interventions. Oliver is Principal Investigator in the Deep Structure in New York (DeStiNY) Lab and is an affiliate member of the Laboratory for Aging, Population Health, Disparities, and Intervention Research (LAPHDIR). Relatedly, he is interested in the use of the deep structural paradigm to enable the use of new technology in diagnosis and intervention (e.g., computerized reaction-time measures, eye-tracking, electroencephalography, neuroimaging, and invasive and non-invasive neuromodulation approaches), and in the use of the deep structural paradigm in the development of neuro-symbolic artificial intelligence.   

Oliver has teaching qualifications from the Higher Education Academy and the National Open College Network, and has won awards for his work on basic psychological needs, psycholinguistics, the grammar of English, and a combined award for teaching, creative writing, and community service. He is the current Chair of the Academic Policy Committee for the Warner School and is co-ordinator of the capstone examination on the M.S. Clinical Mental Health Counseling program.  

Oliver was a grateful recipient of the Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull Fellowship from the University of Rochester and a full tuition waiver from the Warner School. His master's level work received support from a Warner School Dean's Scholarship. Oliver is a member of the American Counseling Association (ACA), the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES), the Association for Assessment and Research in Counseling (AARC), the International Honors Society for Counseling (Chi Sigma Iota), the Association for Psychological Science (APS), and the International Society for the Philosophy of the Sciences of the Mind (ISPSM). He has in the past received grants from the CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, the Linguistics Association of Great Britain, and the Potsdam Graduate School. He served as a judge for the Shadow Carnegie Book Award in 2006, and in 2010-11 was a guest-blogger for the Microsoft Corporation on the subject of using SharePoint software in higher education. Oliver has worked as a (post-)doctoral research fellow on a range of counseling and cognitive science projects, and has taught a range of counseling, human development, and psychology courses. Finally, he serves on the editorial board for the Adultspan journal and as an ad-hoc reviewer for journals such as the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Brain Research, Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, and Frontiers in Psychology, and for award and research grant programs for the Association for Psychological Science.

More details about Oliver's career are available in his vita.