Elissa S. Epel, Advisor
Elissa S. Epel studied psychology and psychobiology at Pitzer College, Stanford University (1990, BA) and then clinical and health psychology at Yale University (PhD, 1997). In her research and teaching, she focuses on the role that stress and lifestyle factors have on health and longevity. She is the Associate Director of the Center for Health and Community, a center promoting interdisciplinary research, a Program Leader in the Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar Postdoctoral Fellowship on population health, and core faculty for the NIMH funding Psychology and Medicine Postdoctoral Fellowship. She is involved in several clinical trials at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, where she helps examine how mindfulness meditation affects stress pathways and cell aging. She is a founder and a director of the new UCSF Center for Obesity Assessment, Study, and Treatment (COAST), which focuses on how socio-economic status and stress pathways play a role in the obesity epidemic. Lastly, she plays a role in curriculum development for the medical students, integrating behavioral medicine into the core curriculum. Epel has received several awards from the American Psychological Association, for her work conducted as a student (1996, 1998), as a junior investigator (2005), and recently received the Early Career Award (2008).
The Baumann Institute
