Richard Winett

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Office Address
Heilig Meyers Professor Emeritus of Psychology
Short Bio
Richard A. Winett was one of the first graduates from the clinical psychology program at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, a program that for over the last 50 years has been one of the top world-wide leaders for developing psychologists in research careers.

His first appointments were at the University of Kentucky and then at the Institute for Behavioral Research. Dr. Winett came to Virginia Tech in 1979 as an associate professor.

At Virginia Tech, he now is the Heilig Meyers professor of psychology and former director of both the Psychology Department’s Clinical Science program and the Center for Research in Health Behavior, and has received the Alumni Award for Excellence in Research.

During his career, Dr. Winett has published over 270 peer reviewed articles and has been the principal investigator of 17 research grants with research support by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and other agencies for 40 consecutive years. His proudest achievement is chairing to completion the work of 38 doctoral students and instructing many terrific undergraduate students. Dr. Winett has received the Research Career Mentor Award from the Society for Behavioral Medicine.

Dr. Winett’s research focuses on health behavior, particularly the intersection of health psychology, personalized behavioral medicine, and public health, and the development within a new paradigm of primary and secondary prevention programs linked to nutrition, physical activity, and exercise. Dr. Winett, in addition to his publications in psychology and public health, has published studies in exercise science, specifically focused on resistance training and interval training, and his collaborators are in nutrition, exercise science, and computer science.

1967-1971 Ph.D. Clinical Psychology Graduate Student, SUNY-SB, Stony Brook, NY