Jessica Peters is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the Child Mental Health T32 at Rhode Island Hospital and the Alpert Medical School of Brown University, where she works with Dr. Shirley Yen. She obtained her doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Kentucky, where she was mentored by Dr. Ruth Baer. As a doctoral student, she studied mindfulness as well as mechanisms of psychopathology potentially targeted by mindfulness-based interventions, such as rumination and impulsivity, in the context of borderline personality disorder (BPD) and substance use disorders. Her dissertation utilized neuroimaging to examine the function of anger rumination in BPD. She has published on assessment of mindfulness and the particular importance of nonjudgmental orientation to experience, especially in regard to prevention of psychopathology and looks forward to furthering that line of work with the Varela Award.
