Jacob Thomas is a Doctoral Student, Teaching Assistant, and Alexander Caswell Ellis Fellow in Education in the Dept. of Kinesiology & Health Education.
Thomas earned his B.S. in Psychology from The University of Texas at Dallas in 2014. During his time at UTD, he worked closely with the UT Southwestern Center for Depression Research and Clinical Care, focusing on projects that incorporated cardiovascular exercise as an alternative or augmented treatment for Major Depressive Disorder. Thomas then earned an M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University in 2016 with a concentration in Research Methods. His fieldwork and independent research while at Columbia included a 2-year rotation in the Bellevue Hospital Emergency Department investigating post-traumatic trajectories of stress and resilience and directing a project which leveraged data collected from social media and wearable technology to predict the presence of psychopathology in emerging adults. After completing his Master's degree, Thomas worked for two years as a Research Coordinator in the Division of Behavioral Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center where he primarily contributed to research focused on psychological characteristics that influence the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease, lifestyle interventions to promote a healthy brain, and the biobehavioral response to stress.
In 2018, Thomas returned to his home town of Austin to continue his work and study at UT. His current projects have an overarching goal of understanding how demographic and environmental factors influence behavioral risk.
