Location: Team > Charles O'Brien, MD, Ph.D.

Charles O'Brien, MD, Ph.D.

Dr. Charles O'Brien has been a distinguished member of the University of Pennsylvania's faculty since 1971 and currently serves as a Professor, Vice-Chairman of Psychiatry, and Director of the Center for Studies of Addiction. He also founded the Drug Dependence Treatment Service at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center where he served as Chief of Psychiatry responsible for over 9,000 psychiatric patients. He is board certified in both neurology and psychiatry with added qualifications in addiction psychiatry. Dr. O'Brien's research group has been responsible for numerous discoveries described in over 450 publications that have elucidated information on the nature of addiction and improved the results of treatment for addictive disorders. His work involves discovery of central nervous system changes involved in relapse, new medications, behavioral treatments and instruments for measuring the severity of addictive disorders. Dr. O'Brien was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1991 and has won numerous research and teaching awards throughout his career. He is a former president of the Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Disease and the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology.