Alicia E. Meuret, Ph.D. is the Director of the Anxiety and Depression Research Center (ARC) at SMU. She is an Associate Professor in the Clinical Psychology Division at the Department of Psychology at SMU. Dr. Meuret received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Hamburg based on her doctoral work conducted at the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. She completed postdoctoral fellowships at the Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders at Boston University and the Affective Neuroscience Laboratory in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University.
Her research program focuses on novel treatment approaches for anxiety and mood disorders, biomarkers in anxiety disorders and chronic disease (asthma), fear extinction mechanisms of exposure therapy, and mediators and moderators in individuals with affective dysregulations, including non-suicidal self-injury. Dr. Meuret is the founder of Capnometry-Assisted Respiratory Training (CART).
She serves on several editorial boards and is an Associate Editor for the journal Behavior Therapy, and past guest editor for the International Journal of Psychophysiology. Dr. Meuret is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, was past president of the Anxiety Disorders Special Interest Group at Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, and served as a technical expert for Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Effective Health Care Program. She is a board-certified clinical psychologist who maintains a small private practice.
Dr. Meuret has authored over 85 peer-reviewed articles and book chapter. For her work she has received generous funding by the National Institutes of Health and other agencies and awards, including the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, the Psychiatric Research Society, and the American Psychosomatic Society.
Thomas Ritz, Ph.D. is a Professor of Psychology in SMU. He received his Ph.D. and Habilitation (including venia legend) degrees from the University of Hamburg in Germany, taught at the University of Kiel, Germany, and held positions as a post-doctoral research fellow at Stanford University and the University of London, UK.
Dr. Ritz is Director of the Psychobiology of Emotion, Stress, and Chronic Disease Research program at SMU. He is past recipient of the Award for Distinguished Early Contributions to Psychophysiology by the Society for Psychophysiological Research (SPR) and was Past President of the International Society for the Advancement of Respiratory Psychophysiology (ISARP). He has served on various committees of scientific societies and editorial boards of academic journals, as past Associate Editor of the journal Behavior Therapy, and currently as Associate Editor for Biological Psychology. His research has been funded generously by private donors and federal agencies, in particular the National Institutes of Health (currently with three major awards for studies in the behavioral medicine of asthma and for treatment of anhedonia), for which he has also functioned as ad-hoc reviewer and permanent member of the Behavioral Medicine Interventions and Outcome (BMIO) study section. He has published more than 135 peer reviewed articles and book chapters, one book, and one co-edited book. Dr Ritz’ major areas of research are in the psychobiology of respiration and the airways, behavioral medicine of respiratory disease, and autonomic function in anxiety and depression, with both basic research and translational treatment studies. His laboratory is specialized in electrophysiology, respiration, and exhaled gas and breath analysis. In longstanding collaborations with colleagues in medical schools (University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Baylor University Medical Center) and SMU Departments of Biology and Chemistry he is has also implemented brain imaging, endocrinology, and immunology techniques in his research.
