Research Assistants

Research Assistants (RAs) at the Oakland Cognitive Behavior Therapy Center are advanced undergraduate students at UC Berkeley or post-baccalaureate students who give their time as volunteers to assist in the research projects at the Center in exchange for the opportunity to learn research skills and participate in research. All these activities assist the Oakland CBT Center in its research activities and prepare the Research Assistant for graduate school and a career as a psychologist and scientist. 

Research assistants, generally numbering 2 or 3, spend every Friday at the Center, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. During that time, they receive individualized mentorship from the partners in the practice, especially Dr. Persons and Dr. Zieve, who are the main researchers in the practice. Every Friday research assistants participate in a research meeting with Dr. Persons and Dr. Zieve to discuss ongoing research projects. RAs carry out a wide variety of tasks, including retrieving articles from the UC Berkeley online library, conducting literature searches, updating a library of reference citations, entering anonymized patient data from an online progress monitoring tool into an Excel database, proofing the database, writing protocols for submission to the institutional review board for an ethical review, preparing Powerpoint slides for presentations, editing and contributing to manuscripts, attending meetings of the Research in Clinical Practice Special Interest Group (SIG) of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT), and many other miscellaneous tasks. Research Assistants participate in ongoing projects and contribute to the writing and obtain authorship on an empirical paper or chapter. Dr. Persons has created a large database of anonymized clinical data, and Research Assistants have the opportunity to use the database to develop and lead a research project for a research project that can lead to a conference submission or publication. The Research Assistants also have the opportunity (at the ABCT conference and the monthly SIG meetings) to meet professionals in the field. 

Research projects at the Center typically focus on the outcome and change process in naturalistic CBT. We are currently working on a longitudinal study of Dr. Persons’ outcomes and use of decision support tools over the course of her career, a study of deterioration and recovery from deterioration during treatment, a study of the relationship between session frequency and the outcome and trajectory of change in treatment, a study of the relationship between trauma and the outcome of CBT, and a study of the effectiveness of CBT in a private practice setting.  

If you are interested in joining our team as a volunteer Research Assistant, please reach out to Dr. Persons at persons@oaklandcbt.com. We ask our RAs to make a one year commitment to the position. The strongest candidates are those who have previous experience working in a research laboratory on campus at UC Berkeley or another university.

Current Research Assistants

Mateo Lopez

Mateo Lopez began working as a research assistant for Dr. Persons at the Oakland CBT Center in May 2025. He is also a post-baccalaureate psychology student at UC Berkeley. 

At the Oakland CBT Center, Mateo is conducting a study using growth mixture modeling to examine how depression and anxiety shift during therapy that he hopes to present as a poster at the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies conference in New Orleans in November 2025. His goal is to identify change trajectories during treatment that can improve how clinicians monitor treatment and adapt the treatment when the patient’s symptoms are unchanging or worsening. He plans to pursue a clinical psychology Ph.D. in the future.

After graduating with a BA in Molecular and Cellular Biology with a concentration in Neurobiology from the University of California, Berkeley in December 2019, Mateo joined the Computational Psychiatry, Neuroimaging, and Sleep Lab at Stanford School of Medicine in February 2022. At Stanford, he led studies that looked at the relationship between sleep and neural biomarkers in the maintenance and treatment of neuropsychiatric symptoms. He then joined the Research Program on Cognition and Neuromodulation-Based Interventions at the University of Michigan in November 2022 as the lead coordinator of two multi-site RCTs focused on improving quality of life in adults with dementia and their caregivers as well as to enhance daily functioning in adults across the MCI spectrum using a memory training program. He then enrolled in the UC Berkeley Psychology Post-Baccalaureate Program in August 2024. 

Former Research Assistants

Griffin Kreit

Griffin Kreit worked as a research assistant for Dr. Persons and Dr. Zieve at the Oakland CBT Center from September 2024 to May 2025. He worked on several projects during his time at the Center, including one that resulted in a chapter in an edited book and another that led to an empirical paper that has been submitted for publication: 

Persons, J. B., Zieve, G. G., & Kreit, G. (in press). Using the case formulation approach to Cognitive Behavior Therapy to resolve episodes of lack of progress and symptom deterioration during Treatment. In Taylor, C., & Johnson, J. (Eds.), Case formulation in cognitive behaviour therapy (3rd ed.). London and New York, Routledge.

Persons, J. B., Zieve, G. G. & Kreit, G. Persons, J. B. (2025). Therapist use of a case formulation is associated with the resolution but not prevention of episodes of symptom deterioration and lack of progress during cognitive behavior therapy. [Manuscript submitted for publication].

Griffin will start graduate school in Clinical Psychology at the University of Oregon in the fall of 2025. He plans to study the prediction and prevention of suicide and acute crises using idiographic methodology.

Aditi Bhat, B.S.

Aditi Bhat worked as a Research Assistant at the Oakland CBT Center from February 2024 through October 2024 after earning her B.S. degree in Psychology from UC Riverside in June 2023. Aditi aspires to pursue a graduate degree in clinical psychology and to focus her studies on psychopathology and language development in early childhood. At the Oakland CBT Center she worked on several of the ongoing projects at the Center, including the longitudinal study of Dr. Persons’ outcomes over the course of her career, and the effectiveness of CBT in private practice. She also worked with Dr. Cook to assemble a compendium of progress monitoring tools for use when providing CBT to children and adolescents that she presented as a poster at the November 2024 conference of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies in Philadelphia.

Caroline Harris

Caroline Harris began working as a research assistant for Dr. Persons at the Oakland CBT Center in February 2022 after completing her bachelor’s degree in Psychology at UC Berkeley in December 2021. She plans to attend graduate school in clinical psychology.

Letian (Jane) Li

Genevieve Freedman

Genevieve Freedman is an undergraduate student pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley. She began doing volunteer work for Dr. Persons at the Oakland CBT Center in June 2021.

Megan Hsiao, B.A.

Megan Hsiao worked with Dr. Persons and Ms. Courry as a research assistant at the Oakland CBT Center from 2018 to 2021 while completing her undergraduate degree and attending post baccalaureate courses at UC Berkeley. During her time working at the Oakland CBT Center Megan contributed to:

Gates, V., Hsiao, M., Zieve, G. G., Courry, R., & Persons, J. B. (2021). Relationship to CBT outcome and dropout of decision support tools of the written case formulation, list of treatment goals and plot of symptom scores. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 142, 103874. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2021.103874

Persons, J.B., Thomas, C., Hsiao, M., & Courry, R. (in preparation). How to build a research database from data you collect to guide your clinical work.

Francesca Leventhal

Francesca Leventhal worked with Dr. Persons and Ms. Courry as a research assistant at the Oakland CBT Center in 2020 and early 2021 while pursuing a BA in psychology at the University of Berkeley, California.  

Agnes Zhao

Agnes Zhao

Agnes worked with Dr. Persons and Ms. Courry as a research assistant at the Oakland CBT Center in late 2018 and early 2019 when she was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley.

Connie Fee, B.A.

Connie, who was a UC Berkeley graduate, worked with Dr. Persons as her research assistant during the years 2017-2019. She left us in 2019 to go to graduate school in Public Health at the University of San Francisco. 

During her time working with Dr. Persons, Connie contributed to a paper and a conference presentation:
Jensen, A. S., Fee, C., Miles, A. L., Beckner, V. L., Owen, D., & Persons, J. B. (2020). Congruence of patient takeaways and homework assignment content predicts homework compliance in psychotherapy. Behavior Therapy, 51(3), 424-433.

Jensen, A. S., Persons, J. B., Fee, C., Miles, A. L., Beckner, V. L., Eidelman, P., Hong, J. J., & Owen, D. (2017, November). Congruence between what a patient reports learning in session and the content of homework assignments predicts homework compliance in naturalistic CBT. Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, San Diego, CA.

Alexandra S. Jensen, B.A.

Alexandra worked as a research assistant with Dr. Persons from 2017-2019 when she was a post baccalaureate student at UC Berkeley. In 2019 she left us to go to law school at Georgetown University. During her time working with Dr. Persons, Alexandra contributed to two papers and a conference poster presentation:

Jensen, A. S., Fee, C., Miles, A. L., Beckner, V. L., Owen, D., & Persons, J. B. (2020). Congruence of patient takeaways and homework assignment content predicts homework compliance in psychotherapy. Behavior Therapy, 51(3), 424-433.

Jensen, A. S., Persons, J. B., Fee, C., Miles, A. L., Beckner, V. L., Eidelman, P., Hong, J. J., & Owen, D. (2017, November). Congruence between what a patient reports learning in session and the content of homework assignments predicts homework compliance in naturalistic CBT. Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, San Diego, CA.

Persons, J. B., & Jensen, A. S. (2018). Publishing a single-case study. the Behavior Therapist, 41(2), 83-89.

Anthony L. Miles II, B.A.

Anthony worked as a research assistant with Dr. Persons in 2016-2017 when he was an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley, and for a few months after he graduated in 2016. In 2017 he left us to commence graduate study in a clinical psychology Ph.D. program at Northern Illinois University. During his time as Dr. Persons’ research assistant, Anthony contributed to:

Jensen, A. S., Fee, C., Miles, A. L., Beckner, V. L., Owen, D., & Persons, J. B. (2020). Congruence of patient takeaways and homework assignment content predicts homework compliance in psychotherapy. Behavior Therapy, 51(3), 424-433.

Lisa Ann D. Yu, M.S.

Lisa Ann worked as a research assistant with Dr. Persons in 2015, when she was an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley. After graduating from UC Berkeley, Lisa Ann graduated from Stanford University with an M.S. in Statistics. She contributed to:

Zieve, G. G., Persons, J. B., & Yu, L. A. D. (2019). Relationship between dropout and outcome of naturalistic cognitive behavior therapy. Behavior Therapy, 50, 189-199.

Howard Liu, M.S.

Howard Liu worked as an RA at the CBT Science Center, the predecessor of the Oakland CBT Center, for several years during his time as an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley, before going on to graduate school in Public Health at Harvard, where he completed his Ph.D. in 2018. During his time working as a research assistant with Dr. Persons, Howard collaborated on:

Persons, J. B., Koerner, K., Eidelman, P., Thomas, C., & Liu, H. (2016). Increasing psychotherapists’ adoption and implementation of the evidence-based practice of progress monitoring. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 76, 24-31.