Leadership
| 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 |
| Robert Rosenheck, MD |
Director, Evaluation |
| Patricia A. Resick, PhD |
Director, Women’s Health Science |
| Josef Ruzek, PhD |
Acting Director, Education Division |
| Rachel Nutter, LSW |
Acting Director, Pacific Islands Division |
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Matthew J. Friedman, MD, PhD
Executive Director |
Executive Division, VT |
 Dr. Friedman is Executive Director of the U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Professor of Psychiatry and of Pharmacology at Dartmouth Medical School. He has worked with PTSD patients as a clinician and researcher for thirty 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 written or co-edited seventeen books and monographs, 60 book chapters and 106 peer reviewed articles in scientific journals. Listed in The Best Doctors in America, he is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, past-president of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS), Chair of the scientific advisory board of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America and has served on many VA and NIMH research, education and policy committees. He has received many honors including the ISTSS Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999.
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Paula Schnurr, PhD
Deputy Executive Director |
Executive Division, VT |
 Dr. Schnurr is responsible for program development, consultation on research projects, and strategic direction of the activities at the seven sites that make up the Center. She is a Research Professor of Psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School. She served as President of the ISTSS in 2004 and as a member of the ISTSS Board from 2000-2005. She is the current Editor of the Journal of Traumatic Stress. As a leading researcher in the field of traumatic stress, her work focuses on PTSD treatment, the physical health effects of exposure to trauma, older veterans, and the etiology of PTSD.
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Terence M. Keane, PhD
Director, Behavioral Science Division |
Behavioral Science Division, MA |
 Dr. Keane is a professor and vice-chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine, and 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 has participated in many scientific review panels and was co-chair of the National Institute of Mental Health Consensus Conference that established national standards for the diagnosis and assessment of PTSD. His research has been continuously funded for 27 years and he's published nearly 200 books, papers, and chapters. He is a past president of ISTSS and a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society, and he has received many awards, including a Fulbright Scholarship, Binghamton University's Weisband Distinguished Alumnus Award, the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy's Outstanding Researcher Award, the Robert J. Laufer Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award (1997) and the Lifetime Achievement Award (2004) from the ISTSS.
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John H. Krystal, MD
Director, Clinical Neurosciences Division |
Clinical Neurosciences Division, CT |
 Dr. Krystal is the Robert L. McNeil, Jr. Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Deputy Chairman for Research for the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine, and is one of the nation's leading investigators on the neurobiology and psychopharmacology of PTSD. Dr. Krystal has published over 300 publications and currently serves as Editor of Biological Psychiatry. He has also served on many national advisory committees, including a
DoD-VA
collaborative research program initiative on stress, PTSD, and other illnesses related to the 1991 Gulf War; the National Institute of Health's Director's Advisory Group on Young Investigators; and the NIMH Board of Scientific Counselors, which he has chaired since 2004. He currently is a member of the Board of Directors of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP), Research Society on Alcoholism (RSA), and the Society of Biological Psychiatry (ex-officio). His work has been honored by numerous awards, including the ISTSS Presidents Award and the ISTSS Danieli Award, both for PTSD research contributions. Currently he also serves as Director of the Alcohol Research Center funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
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Robert Rosenheck, MD
Director, Evaluation Division |
Evaluation Division, CT |
 Dr. Rosenheck is Director of the VA Northeast Program Evaluation Center (NEPEC). At Yale Medical School he is a Professor of Psychiatry and Public Health at the Child Study Center and Director of the Division of Mental Health Services and Outcomes Research in the Department of Psychiatry. He is an internationally known mental health service researcher who is leader in cost-effectiveness studies of behavioral health interventions and in monitoring quality of care and other aspects of the performance of large health care systems. He has over 18 years of experience evaluating, disseminating, and monitoring over 900 innovative mental health programs across the VA system, including: several hundred specialized VA programs for homeless veterans with severe mental illness; a national network of Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) teams for veterans who suffer from severe and persistent mental illnesses; and specialized programs for veterans suffering from PTSD. Since 1994 he has published the annual Mental Health Report Card for the VA. He has been a prime architect of national VA collaborative programs with both the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Social Security Administration and he has directed evaluation for SAMHSA. He has published more than 400 scientific papers on these important topics covering mental health services quality of care, organization, and financing.
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Patricia A. Resick, PhD
Director, Women's Health Sciences Division |
Women's Health Sciences Division, MA |
 Dr. Resick is a Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at Boston University. She is the author or coauthor of three books and more than 135 scientific articles and book chapters on the topics of assessment and treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder. Dr. Resick has specialized in the development of effective treatments for trauma-related PTSD and depression, in particular, cognitive processing therapy. She is now working on issues of dissemination. She has also specialized in risk factors for PTSD, especially among women. Dr. Resick has served on the Board of Directors of the ISTSS and has served as its secretary and vice president. She is also a past-president of the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy. Dr. Resick has received numerous awards for her research, most recently the Robert S. Laufer Memorial Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement in the Field of PTSD from ISTSS.
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Josef Ruzek, PhD
Acting Director, Education Division |
Education Division, CA |
 Dr. Ruzek has served as an educator with the National Center for PTSD for over 15 years. He is 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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Rachel Nutter, LSW
Acting Director, Pacific Islands Division |
Pacific Islands Division, HI |
 Ms. Nutter has worked with survivors of trauma and disasters in various clinical settings since 1990. Since joining the National Center for PTSD in 2005, she has worked with local and national agencies to increase the quality of PTSD treatment throughout the Pacific Islands. She has worked as a clinician and manager in private, non-profit, state and federal healthcare agencies, focusing on bringing empirically-supported treatments for serious mental illness to inpatient and outpatient settings in Hawaii. She is an experienced disaster mental health responder and educator, and has trained clinicians throughout the country in post-disaster mental health interventions. Through a SAMHSA capacity-building grant she worked to improve Hawaii's behavioral response to disasters and currently serves on a SAMHSA cadre of consultants on trauma and disaster. She also has a strong background in the area of suicidal behavior, developing and implementing the first Dialectical Behavior Therapy program in Hawaii, as well as conducting trainings on this topic.
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