Judson Brewer

Judson Brewer, MD, PhD ("Dr. Jud") is a psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and New York Times best-selling author recognized as one of the world's leading experts on habit change and the science of self-mastery. He is Director of Research and Innovation at Brown University's Mindfulness Center, where his lab uses fMRI and EEG to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying mindfulness, addiction, and anxiety—research that has fundamentally reshaped how scientists and clinicians understand behavior change.

Dr. Jud has spent over two decades developing and testing evidence-based programs for smoking cessation, emotional eating, and anxiety—translating rigorous science into tools that are both clinically effective and accessible to general audiences. He has trained U.S. Olympic athletes, coaches, and foreign government ministers, and his work has been featured on 60 Minutes, The New York Times, Time, and beyond. His TED talk on habit change has accumulated over 20 million views.

He is the author of three books—The Craving Mind, Unwinding Anxiety, and The Hunger Habit—and writes the Substack newsletter Inside the Curious Mind. He co-founded MindSciences and MindShift Recovery, a nonprofit integrating digital therapeutics with peer support for addiction treatment. His latest initiative, Going Beyond Anxiety (goingbeyondanxiety.com), is a next-generation program that combines cutting-edge neuroscience with experiential learning to transform how people relate to anxiety at its root.