Dr. Natalie Ceballos

Biography

Dr. Ceballos is a first-generation college graduate raised in rural Oklahoma. She earned a B.S. in Biological Sciences and a B.A. in Chemistry from Southwestern Oklahoma State University in 1998. In 2003 she completed a Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the University of Oklahoma Health Science Center, where her dissertation was funded by an Individual National Research Service Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Following a postdoctoral fellowship funded by the National Institutes of Health at the University of Connecticut, Dr. Ceballos joined the Department of Psychology at Texas State University in 2006. She began as a non-tenure line faculty member, then joined the tenure track as an Assistant Professor in 2007. She earned early tenure and promotion to Associate Professor in 2012 and was promoted to Professor in 2017.

Dr. Ceballos’ research focuses on disentangling the contributions of common factors that may accompany or predate the development of addictive behaviors. Much of her work has examined neurophysiological indices of addiction-related cue reactivity in college drinkers, as well as the influence of factors such as stress and acculturation on the use of alcohol and other drugs. She has published in multiple outlets including Addictive Behaviors, Biological Psychology, the Journal of Addiction Medicine, the Journal of Studies on Alcohol & Drugs, and Pharmacology, Biochemistry, & Behavior. Dr. Ceballos’ research program has been funded by external grants from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the Integrative Neuroscience Initiative on Alcoholism Consortium, and Humanities Texas.

Dr. Ceballos is a twenty-year member of the Research Society on Alcoholism (RSA) and most recently served as a Co-Chair of RSA’s Government Affairs and Advocacy Committee. She has held numerous editorial positions with scholarly journals, including her current role as Assistant Field Editor for the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. At Texas State, Dr. Ceballos served as a Faculty Senator for three years, including terms as Secretary and Vice Chair, and chaired Texas State’s Non-tenure Line Faculty Committee from 2019-2020. She served as Associate Chair of the Department of Psychology from 2014-2016 and again from 2020-2021. In 2020, Dr. Ceballos was selected as a Fellow of the Texas Academic Leadership Academy.

Areas of Interest

Cognitive Psychology

Cross-cultural/International Psychology

Neuroscience