RonaldCowanMDPhD

Summary

• I completed my PhD at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology with a focus on in vivo intracellular neurophysiology of neocortex. I am a graduate of the Weill Cornell Medical School and completed my internship in Internal Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School and residency in Psychiatry at The McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School. There, I received the Livingston Award and the Dupont-Warren Fellowship to support training and research in neuroimaging. I led a program in neuroimaging research at Vanderbilt University prior to my current role where I was most recently Vice-Chair for Education and Director of the Psychiatry Residency Training program in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. I am currently the Harrison Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis (https://www.uthsc.edu/psychiatry/index.php). I serve as a member of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF) Scientific Council, in the area of Addiction. The Department of Psychiatry at UTHSC is actively recruiting new clinical and research faculty and is well poised to embrace emerging advances in neuroscience, artificial intelligence, genetics, evolutionary psychiatry, and structural and social determinants of health. The department places strong value on compassion and empathy, and patient-centered approaches to care, and greatly values diversity across all areas. My clinical interests include psychosomatic medicine, depression, substance use, obesity and LGBTQI mental health. My research interests have focused on the neurobiology of motivated behavior, including basic mechanisms and clinical mechanisms of substance and process addiction, investigated primarily with functional and structural MRI and PET methods. Recent work has included psychophysical studies of pain processing in aging and dementia.

Department of Psychiatry
Established in 1911, The University of Tennessee Health Science Center aims to improve human health through education, research, clinical care and public servic