Dr. Mathews is the Donald R. Dizney Chair in Psychiatry, Professor, Director of the Center for OCD, Anxiety and Related Disorders (COARD), and the Interim Director for the UF Health Center for Neurodevelopment for Department (CAN) of Psychiatry at the University of Florida. Dr. Mathews completed her undergraduate education at Cornell University and her medical training at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She subsequently did an internship and psychiatric residency at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), followed by research fellowships in biological psychiatry and clinical research methods. She spent 15 years as a clinician and research scientist at UCSD and UCSF before moving to the University of Florida in 2015.

As the Director for COARD her research and clinical interests center around identifying the causes and neural underpinnings of obsessive compulsive and anxiety spectrum disorders, including OCD, hoarding disorder, tic disorders, and grooming disorders. She is actively engaged in studying the genetic causes of Tourette Syndrome (TS) and OC spectrum disorders, as well as examining how individuals with these disorders process information using standard neuropsychological assessments, electrophysiological methods such as EEG, and neuroimaging. She is also the principal investigator of a large study comparing community-based behavioral treatment for hoarding disorder to the current standard of care, group treatment by psychologists. She hopes that ultimately, this information will help to refine diagnosis, prevention, and intervention for these disorders. She serves on several advisory boards for non-profit organizations, including the Tourette Association of America, the International OCD Foundation, and the MHASF Task Force on Hoarding and Cluttering. She is also the chair of the TS/OCD Workgroup of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC).