Principal Investigator

Eunice Chen

---

Eunice.Chen@temple.edu

I am an Associate Professor in the Clinical Psychology program at Temple University. I received my PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Sydney, Australia and following this completed two Postdoctoral Fellowships, one at Yale University and the other at the University of Washington, Seattle. Prior to moving to Temple, I was an Assistant Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Chicago where I ran an adult eating and weight disorders program and a health and wellness program for diabetes.

My primary research interest is the etiology and treatment of individuals with eating and weight disorders. A focus has been the development and testing of psychosocial treatments for subgroups of individuals with eating disorders for whom standard treatments fail, e.g. non-responders to brief interventions as well as adults with Anorexia Nervosa. To this end, I developed treatments for eating disorders utilizing Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Family Based Therapy. The results of these trials suggest that we have behavioral interventions that are helpful for more severe and chronic eating disorders and this has informed my development as a clinical scientist.

I have moved from asking ‘what’ treatments work for disorders for which standard interventions are less helpful — to asking ‘how’ these treatments work. Over the last five years, I have retrained in clinical neuroscience and data science, with a focus on functional magnetic resonance imaging. A goal of this research has been to examine the brain circuitry associated with eating disorders such as Binge-Eating Disorder in the context of obesity and how disorders such as obesity are impacted by interventions. As part of this work, I run a translational program utilizing behavioral, self-report, neuroimaging, psychophysiological, and behavioral genetic methods.

My work has been funded by the National Institute of Health, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and NARSAD The Mental Health Foundation. I am a member of the Association for Psychological Science, American Psychological Association, the Obesity Society, the Eating Disorders Research Society, the Organization for Human Brain Mapping and the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies.