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Scientific Director and President
Laureate Institute for Brain Research
Dr. Paulus graduated from the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz studying medicine in 1985. From 1985 until 1986 he worked as a Research Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Mainz. He received a fellowship from the German Federation of Research to study translational animal models for mania with Dr. Karen Britton at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). Following his fellowship, he continued with Dr. Arnold Mandell working on the utility of nonlinear dynamical systems approaches to quantify human and animal behavior. In 1993 he continued his training in psychiatry as an intern at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center – Hillside Hospital in New York. He returned to San Diego to complete his residency in psychiatry in 1997, when he joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UCSD. He also joined the Veterans Affairs San Diego Health Care System as a staff psychiatrist focusing on mood and anxiety disorders. Until his departure in 2014, Dr. Paulus treated Veterans as an outpatient psychiatrist and via telemental health in community-based outpatient clinics. During that time, he received continuous funding from both NIH and the Department of Veterans Affairs. His primary interest focused on individuals with stimulant use as well as – in collaboration with Dr. Murray Stein - patients with anxiety disorders. He used functional magnetic resonance imaging to better understand the underlying brain processes of these disorders and to use functional neuroimaging to identify novel treatment targets or prognostic biomarkers. Dr. Paulus moved from San Diego to Tulsa in 2014 to head the Laureate Institute for Brain Research (LIBR) as its Scientific Director and President.
Dr. Paulus has a Google Scholar h-index of 107 and has published over 450 peer-reviewed manuscripts. Dr. Paulus is the Deputy Editor of JAMA Psychiatry, a Series Editor for Current Topics in Behavioral Neuroscience, and is on several editorial boards of top-tier psychiatric journals. He has served on numerous NIH and International Study Sections and is currently on the National Institute of Mental Health Board of Scientific Councilors. The goal for LIBR is to identify disease-modifying processes (DMP) based on circuits, behavior, or other levels of analysis, which – when modulated – change (1) the risk for, (2) the severity of, or (3) the recurrence of a disease such as mood, anxiety, or substance use disorder. Dr. Paulus’ program of research is to delineate DMPs and provide pathways towards the development of process-specific transdiagnostic interventions that have pragmatic utility, i.e. improve a patient’s condition faster with fewer side effects and fewer recurrences, and explanatory value, i.e. refine our understanding of the causal relationships between specific processes and a mental health condition.
Dr. Paulus has been an ADAA member since 2008 and was the past Chair of ADAA's Scientific Council.
