Dr. Chao’s program of research is dedicated to improving the efficacy of treatments for eating and weight disorders. Her research interests and expertise lie in the behavioral, pharmacological, and metabolic/surgical treatment of obesity as well as the behavioral, psychological, and pharmacological treatment of binge eating disorder. She specializes in developing and evaluating treatments for obesity, as well as identifying behavioral and biological phenotypes of obesity that can be used to tailor treatment. In particular, Dr. Chao is interested in how eating phenotypes and cognitive neuroscience can help us understand obesity and eating disorders. To this end, she combines innovative behavioral tasks with structural and functional brain imaging, and self-report and laboratory-based measures. Dr. Chao’s ultimate goals are to build new explanatory models to explain variability in response to obesity treatments, identify predictors of outcomes, and translate research findings to tools for clinical decision-making and novel interventions.