Rate My Professor Nate Thom

Nathaniel J. Thom, Ph.D., serves as Associate Professor and Chair of Biological and Health Sciences and Director of the Neuroscience Program at Wheaton College, where he has been on the faculty since 2013, promoted to Associate Professor in 2018. He holds a Ph.D. in Exercise Science from the University of Georgia (2009), an M.S. in Exercise Science from the same university (2005), and a B.S. in Biology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2001). Prior to joining Wheaton, Thom completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Applied Neuroscience at the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego (2009-2013), working as a stress physiologist and co-investigator on projects exploring the neurobiological underpinnings of resilience. During this time, he also served as a member of the Optibrain Consortium at the University of California-San Diego, designing and analyzing fMRI data on elite performance under stress, and as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Point Loma Nazarene University, teaching Anatomy and Physiology.

Thom's research specializes in factors that promote adaptive responses to stress, employing psychophysiological and neuroimaging techniques to investigate how physical and mental training programs influence brain-behavior relationships for healthy stress response and recovery. His studies evaluate interventions to enhance physical activity using meta-regression and structural equation modeling, and assess resilience among aid workers. Notable publications include "Modifying Resilience Mechanisms in At-Risk Individuals: A Controlled Study of Mindfulness Training in Marines Preparing for Deployment" (American Journal of Psychiatry, 2014), "Mindfulness-based Training Attenuates Insula Response to an Aversive Challenge" (Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2014), "Emotional Scenes Elicit More Pronounced Self-reported Emotional Experience and Greater EPN and LPP Modulation When Compared to Emotional Faces" (Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, 2013), and "Detecting Emotion in Others: Increased Insula and Decreased Medial Prefrontal Cortex Activation During Emotion Processing in Elite Adventure Racers" (Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2012). Thom has earned the Junior Faculty Achievement Award from Wheaton College (2018-2020), Best Paper awards from SAIC Technical Fellows Council (2012-2013), and the Franklin Foundation Fellowship for Neuroimaging (University of Georgia, 2006-2008). He directs the Brain Hygiene Lab, mentoring undergraduate students on resilience and stress projects, and has developed courses such as Neurobiology of Stress and Foundations of Neuroscience.