Biography

I am a Clinical Professor at the Stanford University Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. I have also held academic positions at UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco, and an Honorary Professorship at the University of York in the United Kingdom.

My professional activities have included outpatient and inpatient psychopharmacological and psychotherapeutic care, clinical program management and course development at the graduate and undergraduate level. My scientific publications have focused on OCD, behavioral addictions and the intersection of psychology and technology, and I have published scholarly books on these topics with Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press.

I have also authored books meant for a wider non-clinical audience, including "Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the e-Personality"​ (New York Times Editors' Choice). The attention this work generated, including coverage by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Harvard Business Review, Congressional Quarterly and PBS, has contributed to the dissemination of new scientific concepts--and to a much needed early conversation on a topic that would come to dominate our consciousness, namely the effects on personality, culture, privacy and democracy of runaway digital technology.

An advantage of working at Stanford is the possibility of partnering with visionaries who can help you turn abstract ideas into living business entities. I tried to do so by co-founding the first video-enabled psychotherapy portal in Silicon Valley, helping open early doors within the telepsychiatry and telemental health fields in the US.

These interests continue to inspire my work, and I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to discuss them with varied audiences over numerous lectures I have given nationally and internationally.