I am a Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience at Georgetown University. I received my Ph.D. from Harvard University and conducted my post-doctoral research at the National Institute of Mental Health. I am the Past-President of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society. My research is aimed at answering the questions: How do we understand what others think and feel? What drives us to help other people? What prevents us from harming them? My research on these topics uses functional and structural brain imaging, as well as behavioral, cognitive, genetic, and pharmacological techniques and comprises over 90 publications in journals that include Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Human Behavior, American Journal of Psychiatry, and JAMA Psychiatry. I have written an award-winning trade book about my research called THE FEAR FACTOR (2017, Hachette). My research has received awards that include the Cozzarelli Prize for scientific excellence and originality from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, The S&R Kuno Award for Applied Science for the Social Good, and the Richard J. Wyatt Fellowship award for translational research from the NIMH.
