I am a second-year graduate student in the clinical psychology doctoral program.  I received my B.A. in Psychology with honors  in 2005 from Boston University and my M.A. in Social Science, with a focus on Psychology, from the University of Chicago in 2008.  Subsequently, I was a Clinical Research Coordinator in Neuropsychiatry for studies with adults who have mood and psychotic disorders.  Broadly, my research interests include maladaptive adolescent development and the factors associated with this development, such as parent-adolescent interactions, conflict, psychopathology, and risk taking.  Two disorders that my research has focused on are social anxiety and bulimia nervosa.  I am interested in the variables that contribute to the development of psychological disorders and how to prevent these disorders through early treatment and interventions in childhood and adolescence.  Some of my most recent work has focused on parent-adolescent interactions in families with a bulimic adolescent, as well as parents' and teens' reports of conflict behaviors.  In my research I am interested in incorporating multiple methods of assessment including physiological indices such as heart rate variability and neuroimaging.

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Email: thomas82@umd.edu