Ellen W. Leen-Feldner, Ph.D.
Director of the Arkansas Interdisciplinary Sciences Laboratory
University of Arkansas
Phone (office) 479-575-5814
Phone (Lab) 479-575-3523
eleenfe@uark.edu (email)

---

Dr. Ellen Leen-Feldner is Professor in the Department of Psychological Science at the University of Arkansas and directs the Arkansas Interdisciplinary Sciences (ArKIDS) Laboratory. Dr. Leen-Feldner studies the developmental psychopathology of anxiety and related problems among adolescents (ages 8 to 16 years). In this vein, she evaluates the independent and overlapping effects of multiple factors (e.g., parenting behavior, anxiety sensitivity, substance use) on adolescent anxiety etiology with an explicit developmental lens. For instance, she has published theoretical and empirical work on specific aspects of the pubertal transition that set the stage for enhanced anxiety-type problems among youth. An expert in experimental psychopathology approaches to elicit real-time affective states, Dr. Leen-Feldner combines laboratory-based procedures with a diverse array of methods, including self-report, multi-informant assessment, behavioral observation, psychophysiological and hormonal assessment, as well as structured interviews, in the context of both cross-sectional and prospective research designs, to address questions at the heart of this research program.  Collectively, this work highlights adolescence as a critical developmental epoch during which vulnerability is transformed into clinically relevant symptomatology, and thus an important window for the delivery of evidence-based interventions aimed at offsetting adolescent risk. To support this work, Dr. Leen-Feldner has been successful at obtaining state and federal funding, including research (NIDA RO3) and training (sponsor for F31 and NSF fellowships) grants. Given her work is at the intersection of developmental and clinical perspectives, Dr. Leen-Feldner mentors both clinical and experimental graduate students.