Tara Peris received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Virginia in 2006. She went on to complete an NIMH-sponsored fellowship in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Intervention at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior before joining the faculty there. Dr. Peris currently is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. She is the Program Director of the ABC Children’s Partial Hospitalization Program and an attending psychologist in the Child OCD, Anxiety, and Tic Disorders Program. Both her clinical and research interests center on the development of evidence-based treatments for child and adolescent anxiety disorders. She is particularly interested in understanding how and why our current interventions work and in developing novel treatments for youth who don’t respond well to current treatment approaches. Her Friends Scholar research examines the neural mechanisms underlying specific therapeutic approaches for anxiety with the goal of understanding (a) how current treatments work to improve anxiety; (b) whether there are developmental differences in how youth respond to these techniques; and (c) how treatment might be refined further. In addition to her award from the Friends of the Semel Institute, Dr. Peris is the recipient of a career development award from NIMH, a NARSAD Young Investigator Award, and awards from the Obsessive Compulsive Foundation (OCF) and Trichotillomania Learning Center.