Education
| 2008 | Clinical Psychologist (Professional training in cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy 2002 – 2008 at the Centre for Psychological Psychotherapy, University of Heidelberg, Germany) |
| 2007 | Doctor Rerum Socialium (equivalent to Ph.D.), Summa Cum Laude, Psychology, University of Mannheim, Germany (Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Josef Bailer, Prof. Dr. Fred Rist, and Prof. Dr. Werner W. Wittmann) Thesis: Attentional Bias, Memory Bias, and Symptom Attribution in Idiopathic Environmental Intolerance and Classical Somatoform Disorders |
| 2001 | Diploma in Psychology, University of Mannheim, Germany (Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Heinz-Martin Süß). Thesis: Inhibitory control – An explanatory construct for cognitive aging effects? |
| 2001 | Research Assistant "Attention and Working Memory Lab", School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta GA, USA (Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Randall Engle) |
| 1997–2010 | Research Assistant in a project on Working Memory Capacity and Intelligence, University of Mannheim, Germany |
Academic and Clinical Positions
| Since 2014 | Professor of Clinical Psychology, University of Mainz, Germany |
| 2013-2014 | Visiting Professor of Health Psychology, University of Mannheim, Germany |
| 2008-2013 | Post-doctoral research fellow at the Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany (Head of department: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Hiller) |
| 2011-2012 | Visiting Researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry, Department of Psychological Medicine, King's College, London, UK (Supervisor: Dr. James Rubin; Head of department: Prof. Dr. Simon Wessely) |
| 2006-2008 | Psychotherapist in the Mannheim Social Phobia Study (SOPHISMA; Supervisor: Dr. Regina Steil) |
| 2002-2007 | Research assistant at the Department of Clinical Psychology at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany (Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Josef Bailer) |
| 2001-2002 | Lectureship in Experimental Psychology at the Department of General Psychology and Methodology, University of Basel, Switzerland (Head of department: Prof. Dr. Klaus Opwis) |
Professional Affiliations
- Association for Psychological Science (APS)
- German Psychological Society (DGPs; Section Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy)
- German Society for Behavioural Medicine (DGVM)
- German Association for Behaviour Therapy (DGVT)
Research Interests
- Experimental assessment of interoception
- Relations between interoception, somatic symptom perception, and emotion regulation
- Processes of emotion regulation and their relationship to mental disorders
- The affective role of mental imagery in psychopathology
- Experimental assessment of attention allocation and cognitive-emotional processing
- Assessment of cognitive biases in psychopathology
- Social intelligence
- Structural equation modelling
- Psychotherapy Research
- Somatoform disorders
- Functional somatic syndromes
- Tactile information processing
Awards
| 2012 | Research Award of the German Association for Behaviour Therapy (DGVT) |
| 2012 | Poster among the Top 11 Poster Selection at the 12th International Congress of Behavioral Medicine, Budapest, Hungary. Poster: How Many Types of Medically Unexplained Symptoms: one or Many, or Both at the Same Time? A Bifactor Approach to the Latent Structure of Somatic Symptoms |
| 2010 | Poster Award (Poster among the Top 15) at the 11th International Congress of Behavioral Medicine, Washington, USA. Poster: How quick can you forget “tumor”? Health anxiety and the ability to remove illness related information from working memory |
| 2006 | Best Young Scientist Award of the Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy Division of the German Psychological Society (DGPs) |