Thomas J. White Office: 2103 Cole Field House E-mail: twhite@psyc.umd.edu Phone: (202) 330-1122

Background Information

I completed my Bachelor's degree at the University of Minnesota in 2001, with a major in Psychology and a minor in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature. As an undergraduate, I worked as a research assistant for Dr. Mark Snyder, studying altruistic behaviors and attitudes, and for Dr. Dorothy Hatsukami, studying the effectiveness of harm reduction strategies in minimizing health risks for cigarette smokers who are not able or willing to quit smoking. Following the completion of my B.A., I worked full-time for Dr. Hatsukami for an additional year, gaining experience in a wide variety of topics pertaining to nicotine addiction and tobacco use. During this time, I worked on a meta-analysis of the nicotine replacement therapy literature and the ablilty of experimental participants to break the double-blind procedure and assess their condition (active or placebo). This meta-analysis was published in the journal Addictive Behaviors. Following this experience I entered the Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology at the University of Maryland in 2002

Research Interests

What drives me professionally is the implementation of cutting-edge scientific psychology on the human level. Empirically supported treatments work when they are correctly delivered, and my passion to study what makes them work has led me to work as an investigator and a therapist on several treatment outcome studies over the years. I strive to know what components of treatment drive its success and what avenues of delivery yield the strongest outcomes. My research experiences and interests are primarily focused on substance use disorders and treatment outcome studies in substance use disorders. I have worked on smoking- and smokeless-tobacco-cessation projects since my undergraduate days at the University of Minnesota, where I worked at the National Institute on Drug Abuse- and National Cancer Institute-funded Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center (TTURC) under Dr. Dorothy Hatsukami. At TTURC I co-conducted a meta-analysis of the assessment of the double-blind procedure in efficacy studies of nicotine replacement therapies, which concluded that participants are seldom blind to their condition (nicotine vs. placebo), suggesting a major weakness in the literature. At the University of Maryland, I have had the opportunity to conduct a variety of studies on topics related to tobacco use. At CAPER, I have had the opportunity to work in multiple roles, including the provision of smoking cessation therapy on NIDA-funded studies of relapse to smoking. Serving in this function in CAPER, building on my prior training, research, and clinical experiences, gave me a strong foundation upon which to build my doctoral dissertation. For my dissertation, I applied a standard behavioral treatment for smoking cessation within a residential substance abuse treatment center population, using progressive muscle relaxation as a control condition. The crux of this research was to determine the level of therapy required to produce meaningful change in the outcome measures (carbon monoxide, as measured mechanically, and self-reported cigarette intake). I am using hierarchical linear modeling to measure these changes in carbon monoxide levels and self-reported cigarette intake within individuals across numbers of sessions and between the treatment and control groups. I am in the process of scheduling my dissertation defense for late October and I am applying for predoctoral internships in clinical psychology for the 2009-2010 year.

Personal Interests

My greatest passion is for music and I spend much of my free time playing guitar and writing songs. I am also passionate about athletics, having played soccer in middle- and high school and having played water polo for a year and a half in graduate school, culminating in an international water polo tournament in Paris in the spring of 2007. I write music with a neighbor on Wednesday nights and follow my hometown teams – the Minnesota Twins, Vikings, and Wild – throughout the calendar year. I am passionate about politics, from the global to the local level. I was elected to Student Senate as a high school freshman and served through my senior year, as Junior Class President and Student Body Vice-President. Living in Washington, DC for the past 3-1/2 years, I have relished the energy and enthusiasm with which Washingtonians follow the political process and have learned a great deal about how government works. I have also had the opportunity to have served for a year on Team DC, a local organization of lesbian and gay athletes commissioned by the mayor of Washington, DC. I believe that civic committees are an important means of giving back to the community, even for busy professionals.

Selected Publications

Mooney, M., White, T., & Hatsukami, D. (2004). The blind spot in the nicotine replacement therapy literature: Assessment of the double blind in clinical trials. Addictive Behaviors, 29, 673-684.

Smith, B.D., Osborne, A., Mann, M., Jones, H., & White, T. (2004). Arousal and behavior: The biopsychological effects of caffeine. In A. Nehlig (Ed.), Psychological Effects of Drugs.

Smith, B.D., White, T., & Shapiro, R. (2006). The arousal drug of choice: Sources of caffeine. In B.D. Smith, & B.S. Gupta (Eds.), Caffeine and Health. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

Selected Presentations

Lejuez, C.W., Bornovalova, M., White, T., Brown, R., Kahler, C., & Strong, D. (2006, February). The role of emotional intolerance and emotional reactivity in early smoking lapse. Poster presentation at the 12th Annual Meeting of the Society for Research on Nicotine & Tobacco (SRNT), Orlando, FL.

Lejuez, C.W., White, T., Kosson, D., & Brown, R. (2003, November). Distinguishing Borderline Personality Disorder in a Population of Female Substance Abusers. Panel presentation at the 36th Annual Convention of the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy (AABT), Boston, MA.

Lemmonds, C.A., Jensen, J., White, T., Schulte, S., Link, C., Murphy, S., Losey, L., Fristad, A., Carmella, S., Hecht, S., & Hatsukami, D. (2003, February). Tobacco toxin reduction: Effects on biomarkers of toxicity and exposure. Paper presentation in symposium "Tobacco Exposure Reduction" at the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA.

Losey, L.M., Fristad, A., Carmella, S.G., Hecht, S.S., White, T., Lemmonds, C., Jensen, J., & Hatsukami, D. (2001, October). Effects of Reduction in Smoking on Urinary Metabolites of a Tobacco-Specific Lung Carcinogen. Poster session presented at the Biomarkers for Tobacco Exposure Conference, Minneapolis, MN.

Mooney, M., White, T., & Hatsukami, D. (2002, February). The blind spot in the nicotine replacement therapy literature: Assessment of the double-blind. Poster presentation at the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco Annual Meeting, Savannah, GA.

White, T., Mooney, M., & Hatsukami, D. (2001, April). The Blind Spot in the Nicotine Replacement Therapy Literature. Poster session presented at the 36th Annual Minnesota Undergraduate Psychology Conference, St. Paul, MN.

White, T., Wolf, N., Tsang, W., Bucceri, J., & Lejuez, C.W. (2003, October). Behavior Therapy at the University of Maryland – College Park. Poster presentation at the 20th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Association for Behavior Analysis, Greenville, SC.