by KARA SCHWEISS
Averie Linnell knows her educational path is a bit unconventional, but she’s loved the journey so far. It’s included research with the National Counterterrorism, Innovation, Technology and Education Center (NCITE) at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and a summer internship with Roblox in California.
Her interest began in high school by simply exploring a term that piqued her curiosity: industrial-organizational psychology.
The American Psychological Association (APA) describes industrial-organizational psychology (I/O) as scientific study of human behavior in organizations and the workplace, applying principles of individual, group and organizational behavior to problem-solving.
“I’ve had a great experience. Everything I’ve learned and all the opportunities I’ve had started with UNO, so I’m just very grateful,” said Linnell, who is pursuing a Ph.D. at UNO in psychology with a concentration in I/O. She holds a master’s degree from UNO in the same field.
“Having an undergraduate concentration in I/O psychology is not very common, and so I think that’s a unique opportunity for our students. It opens up a lot of paths, whether you decide to go to grad school for I/O psychology, or if you want to go into like business and do HR,” said Linnell. “It’s a very broad and flexible skill set to have.”
This past summer, Linnell was thrilled to be selected for an internship with the People Science & Analytics team at Roblox.
“Everything that we do on the People Science team is about the employees or the “builders,” as they call them, and identifying who is fit for the job and who has the skills and abilities to perform that job successfully and to be hired at Roblox,” she said. “It was a really great experience to take what I learned from school and put it into action.”
The Roblox internship was a departure from her first academic research experience at UNO.
“The work I did at NCITE was more about safety for people using any type of emerging technology, because the focus is all about how bad actors can leverage technology for harm, and how we can try to foresee opportunities for that and try to circumvent it before it happens,” she said.
Linnell’s current research focuses on creative problem-solving.
“I work for the university on a grant that’s funded by the Army Research Institute,” she said. “It’s opened even more interesting pathways to explore.”
APA’s Division 10, the Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity & the Arts, will hold its next annual research conference in Omaha in March 2026.
“We went to our [March 2025] national conference in New Haven, Connecticut, and got to meet a bunch of creativity researchers. That was really special. And the next conference is going to be in Omaha, so I’m looking forward to that,” Linnell said. “That’s really exciting to have involvement from our research assistants and have them be represented at a national conference.”
