Leadership

Name	Title
Matthew Friedman, MD, PhD	Executive Director, Executive Division
Paula Schnurr, PhD	Deputy Executive Director, Executive Division
Terence M. Keane, PhD	Director, Behavioral Science
John H. Krystal, MD	Director, Clinical Neurosciences
Rani Desai, PhD, MPH	Director, Evaluation
Patricia A. Resick, PhD	Director, Women’s Health Sciences
Josef Ruzek, PhD	Director, Dissemination and Training
James Spira, PhD, MPH	Director, Pacific Islands

Also see the Divisions and Staff Directories.

Dr. Friedman is Executive Director of the US Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Professor of Psychiatry and of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Dartmouth Medical School. He has worked with PTSD patients as a clinician and researcher for thirty-five years and has published extensively on stress and PTSD, biological psychiatry, psychopharmacology, and clinical outcome studies on depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and chemical dependency. He has over 200 publications, including 23 books and monographs.

Listed in The Best Doctors in America, he is a Distinguished Lifetime Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, past-president of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS), past chair of the scientific advisory board of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America, member of APA's DSM-5 Anxiety Disorders Work Group, (and chair of the Trauma and Dissociative Disorders SubWork Group).

He has served on many VA, DoD and NIMH research, education and policy committees. He has received many honors including the ISTSS Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999 and the ISTSS Public Advocacy Award in 2009. He was a finalist for the 2011 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal in the Career Achievement Division.

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Dr. Paula Schnurr has served as Deputy Executive Director of the VA National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder since 1989. She is a Research Professor of Psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School and Editor of the Clinician's Trauma Update-Online.

She received her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology at Dartmouth College in 1984 and then completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School. Dr. Schnurr is Past-President of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and of the Association for Psychological Science. She previously served as Editor of the Journal of Traumatic Stress.

She has investigated risk and resilience factors associated with the long-term physical and mental health outcomes of exposure to traumatic events. She is an expert on psychotherapy research and has conducted a number of clinical trials of PTSD treatment, including a multi-site trials of Prolonged Exposure for female veterans and active duty personnel with PTSD and of group psychotherapy for PTSD in Vietnam veterans. Her most current studies on treatment include clinical trials of a PTSD decision aid, integrated primary care treatment for PTSD, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.

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Dr. Keane is a professor of Psychiatry and Assistant Dean for Research at Boston University School of Medicine. He is also recognized as a world leader in the field of traumatic stress. He developed many of the most widely used PTSD assessment measures and is considered an authority on the cognitive behavioral treatment of PTSD. Dr. Keane was co-chair of the NIMH Consensus Conference that established national standards for the diagnosis and assessment of PTSD. His research has been continuously funded for 33 years and he's published more than 270 journal articles, books, and chapters. Dr. Keane is current president of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) and is a past president of ISTSS as well as a fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Association for Psychological Science (APS). He has received many awards, including a Fulbright Scholarship, Binghamton University's Weisband Distinguished Alumnus Award, the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy's Outstanding Researcher Award, the Robert J. Laufer Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award (1997), the ISTSS Lifetime Achievement Award (2004), and the Harold Hildreth Award for Distinguished Public Service (2012) from the APA. In 2011, he received an honorary doctorate from Binghamton University, his alma mater, for his pioneering research on PTSD.

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Dr. Krystal is the Robert L. McNeil, Jr. Professor of Translational Research and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine. He is one of the nation's leading investigators on the neurobiology, genetics, and psychopharmacology of PTSD. Dr. Krystal has published over 400 papers and reviews.

He currently serves as Editor of Biological Psychiatry, member of the NIAAA National Alcohol Advisory Council, member of the Institute of Medicine of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and president of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. He previously served on the Psychological Health Subcommittee of the Defense Health Board of the Department of Defense.

He was the first recipient of the ISTSS Danielli Award for PTSD research and he has received a number of subsequent honors including the Anna-Monika Foundation Prize for depression research, the NIAAA Jack Mendelson Award for alcoholism research, the APA Kempf Award for schizophrenia research and research mentorship, and the ACNP Joel Elkes Award for translational neuroscience.

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Dr. Hoff received both her MPH in chronic disease epidemiology, and her PhD in mental health services research and psychiatric epidemiology, from Yale University. Dr. Hoff serves as Associate Director of the Northeast Program Evaluation Center, the evaluation arm of mental health services for the VA, is the head of the Women and Trauma Core of Women's Health at Yale, and is Associate Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at Yale.

Dr. Hoff's research utilizes principles of psychiatric epidemiology and services research to examine risk factors and correlates of several psychiatric disorders, with particular attention paid to co-occurring disorders. This research has included studies on pathological gambling, schizophrenia, substance abuse/dependence, the risk of suicide in psychiatric patients, trauma and comorbidity, criminal justice mental health, and the mental health problems experienced by the homeless.

At the national level, Dr. Hoff serves as the program evaluator for VA programs on homeless female veterans, and has served on several advisory committees to the VA on the mental health needs of female veterans, with particular attention to military sexual trauma. She is also the program evaluator for specialized PTSD programs and programs serving returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan within the VA.

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Patricia A. Resick, PhD, ABPP, is the Director of the Women's Health Sciences Division of the National Center for PTSD at the Veterans Affairs (VA) Boston Healthcare System. She is a Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at Boston University. Dr. Resick received her Doctorate in Psychology from the University of Georgia. Over her career, she also served on the faculties of the University of South Dakota, the Medical University of South Carolina and the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where she held an endowed professorship.

Dr. Resick has received grants from NIH, NIJ, CDC, SAMHSA, VA and DoD to provide services and conduct research on the effects of traumatic events, particularly on women, and to develop and test therapeutic interventions for PTSD. Specifically, she developed and tested Cognitive Processing Therapy, an effective short term treatment for PTSD and corollary symptoms. She has published four books and over 200 journal articles and book chapters. Dr. Resick has served on the editorial boards of eight scientific journals and is currently an Associate Editor for the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. She has served on the Board of Directors of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies for nine years including terms as Secretary, Vice-President, and President (2009). She has been a Board Member for the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy (now ABCT) for two terms. She served as President during 2003-2004.

Dr. Resick has received numerous awards for her research, including the Robert S. Laufer Memorial Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement in the Field of PTSD from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and the 2009 Leadership Award by the Association for VA Psychologist Leaders. Since 2006 she has been a leader of a national VA initiative to disseminate Cognitive Processing Therapy throughout the VA system and is currently conducting two large clinical trials at Ft. Hood, Texas. She is also currently on two sub-workgroups for the DSM-5.

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Dr. Ruzek has served as an educator with the National Center for PTSD for over 15 years and holds a faculty appointment at Stanford. He has been a member of the VHA Under Secretary's Special Committee on PTSD and has served on numerous VA educational taskforces and workgroups, assuring PTSD expertise is included in VA educational endeavors

Dr. Ruzek specializes in early intervention to prevent the development of PTSD and co-authored the influential Psychological First Aid manual created jointly by the National Center for PTSD and the NCTSN. His current efforts include disseminating evidence-based cognitive-behavioral treatments for PTSD and developing Internet-based interventions for trauma survivors. He contributed to the development of the joint VA-DoD Clinical Practice Guideline for Management of Traumatic Stress and served as an editor of two editions of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapies for Trauma.

Dr. Ruzek is a member of the Board of Directors of the ISTSS, where he served as Vice President from 2006-2007. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the USUHS Center for Deployment Psychology and the MIRECC National Education Committee.

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Dr. Spira serves as Director of the Pacific Island Division of the National Center, which facilitates access to care through emphasis on ethno-cultural issues, active duty and Guard/Reserve personnel, and telehealth.

Dr. Spira received his MA in Psychology with a focus on Cognitive Neurosciences from UC San Diego; a MPH with social epidemiology emphasis from UC Berkeley, and a PhD with emphasis in Clinical Health Psychology from UC Berkeley. He completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and a Research Fellowship in Neurology at Scripps in La Jolla. Dr. Spira directed the Health Psychology and Consultation-Liaison Programs at Naval Medical Center San Diego, served as President of the American Academy of Clinical Health Psychology, and served on the board of the American Board of Professional Psychology.

He is currently Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Hawaii, and Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego. Dr. Spira's research focuses on preventing and treating the wounds of war, including assessment and treatment of mild traumatic brain injury, prevention of PTSD through stress inoculation training, innovative treatments for PTSD including the use of virtual reality exposure therapy and home-based telemental health, and polytrauma treatment.

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