Education: Bachelor of Science degree at the American University of Beirut; Doctor of Medicine degree at the University of Tennessee, Residency in Psychiatry at UCLA.

He is a Full Research Psychiatrist at UCLA Geffen School of Medicine, the Chief Medical Officer at Collaborative Neuroscience Research, and a former Consultant at the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress. He has also been in the private practice of psychiatry for four decades.

After the 1988 Spitak earthquake, he initiated and directed the Psychiatric Outreach Program in Armenia for 20 years. The program provided treatment to tens of thousands of survivors, trained local professionals and paraprofessionals, and built two clinics in Gumri and Spitak.

His research work has been published extensively in top-ranked peer-reviewed journals. In July, Cambridge University published his book, "Lessons Learned in Disaster Mental Health: Armenia and Beyond."

He is a Lifetime Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and the recipient of numerous awards for his research and humanitarian work, including the distinguished Bruno Lima Award of the American Psychiatric Association, Presidential Award from Armenia, the Government of Greece, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).