TCU’s Studies in Integrative Health Sciences, which will host an annual lecture on stress and its effects on the body, will present Elissa Epel, Ph.D. associate professor of psychiatry at the University of California/San Francisco, at 6:30 p.m. Friday, April 12 in the BLUU ballroom.

She will discuss “Understanding the Connection between Stress, Immune Cell Aging, Cancer & Chronic Disease.” The lecture is free to TCU faculty, staff and but registration is required at https://wwwb.is.tcu.edu/upay2/harris_college_event2/. The lecture is open to the public; general admission tickets are $15.

Epel is a health psychology researcher who investigates the depths and intricacies of the mind-body connection. In particular, she has studied how processes related to psychological stress and meditation-based interventions affect cellular-based measures of aging. Epel also has studied mechanisms of how stress affects eating behavior and metabolism. She has been particularly interested in the automaticity of eating, and how intertwined eating is with our emotional life, and how it can become compulsive.

Epel earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Stanford University and her doctorate in health psychology from Yale University. Her research publications may be found at www.chc.ucsf.edu/ame%5Flab/.