Julian Thayer, Ohio Eminent Scholar in Health Psychology, received the 2012 Distinguished Scientist Award from the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback, an international society for mind-body research, health care, and education.

Thayer joined the faculty in the Department of Psychology in 2006. Before coming to Ohio State, Thayer was chief of the Emotions and Quantitative Psychophysiology Section in the Laboratory Personality and Cognition at the National Institute on Aging.

Thayer's research focuses on how people adapt, both psychologically and physiologically, to stress and how some coping strategies may actually cause psychological problems and illness. His primary area of expertise is how variations in heart rate can serve as an index of how a person's central nervous system is functioning. And that can help researchers understand the mechanisms that link stress to a variety of health problems, including anxiety, depression and heart disease.

He has published over 195 research papers and book chapters covering a wide range of topics including behavioral medicine, cardiology, emotion, psychopathology, bioengineering, research design and multivariate statistical techniques.

Thayer has received numerous research awards including the Sigma Xi Research Recognition Award and the Early Career Award for Contributions to Psychosomatic Medicine from the American Psychosomatic Society, and he is a Fellow of the Society for Behavioral Medicine. He has also received a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research on emotion in Norway and an Alexander von Humboldt Research Award to conduct research in Germany.

He is on the editorial board of Psychosomatic Medicine as well as Music and Medicine and is an associate editor of Bio-Psycho-Social Medicine. Thayer is president of the Rocky Mountain Bioengineering Symposium and president elect of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research.

Thayer is also a professional jazz musician with numerous recordings to his credit.