Lesley Norris, PhD
Biography
Lesley Norris graduated summa cum laude from Boston College with a B.A. in psychology. Following graduation, she completed a post-baccalaureate research position with Dr. Eve Lewandowski at McLean Hospital’s Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder Program. In 2016, she was awarded Temple University’s Presidential Fellowship to begin her doctoral studies in clinical psychology with Dr. Philip Kendall. Lesley’s graduate research focused on understanding response rate heterogeneity in youth anxiety treatments. To this end, Lesley’s NIMH F31-funded dissertation harmonized data from youth anxiety treatment trials, built machine learning models to predict outcomes, and examined model external validity in an outpatient clinic. Her work on this and other projects earned her the Academy of Cognitive and Behavioral Therapies’ Student Achievement Award. Lesley was excited to continue her research on youth anxiety interventions under the mentorship of Drs. Kristen Benito and Jennifer Freeman during her clinical psychology pre-doctoral internship at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University. At Brown, Lesley has extended her research program by using mixed methods with key stakeholders to better understand treatment attrition, with support from an Internship Research Grant Award. As a postdoctoral fellow in Brown’s T32 Research Training Program in Child Mental Health, Lesley will continue to work with the wonderful team at the Pediatric Anxiety Research Center with a focus on the personalization of youth anxiety interventions.