Denise Hien

Denise Hien, PhD, ABPP, is Senior Vice Provost of Research, Distinguished Professor and Helen E. Chaney Endowed Chair in Alcohol Studies of the Center of Alcohol & Substance Use Studies, Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University-New Brunswick in New Jersey. Considered a leader in the field, with continuous funding from NIH (NIAAA, NIDA, NIMH) for over 30 years, her body of work has contributed to the evidence base on the treatment of individuals with trauma-related psychiatric disorders and their comorbidity with addictions, through conducting single- and multi-site clinical trials across the United States in community-based substance abuse treatment settings. Most of her NIH-funded research has focused on understanding and treating traumatic stress and PTSD among women and underrepresented minoritized populations (primarily Black/African American and Latinx women in Harlem, NY) with key goals of addressing health inequalities and understanding the ways in which race/ethnicity, culture, gender, and other aspects of social identities influence the treatment utilization and outcomes.

In order to advance the field of PTSD and SUD treatment, more recently she has been involved in numerous data sharing and big data collaborations including 1) the Global Collaboration on Traumatic Stress (https://www.global-psychotrauma.net/) creating scientific data stewardship on international trauma studies using an open science framework (OSF), 2) an OSF collaboration with Caltech and five other universities on a longitudinal social neuroscience study of Covid19 and its impacts, the COVID Dynamic Study (https://coviddynamic.caltech.edu/), and 3) Project Harmony (http://www.projectharmonyvct.com/) the largest data science project in the field, envisioned and led by Dr. Hien with an executive team of national and international leaders. Under her leadership she created an international consortium of 35 investigative teams of trauma and addiction researchers and a data repository with 42 individual patient data clinical trials (4500+ participants) which will provide a platform to enable new machine learning and AI discoveries to advance the next generations of research in this area.

She is board-certified in clinical psychology and serves on numerous national boards and scientific advisory groups, particularly those supporting data science repositories (National PTSD Repository, and the Veterans/Suicide Repository) and diversity training and mentoring for underrepresented groups in the sciences. Among many honors for her scholarship and mentoring, in 2023 she was given the Inaugural Mary Jean Kreek Award for Underserved Populations from the College of Problems of Drug Dependence and the Award for Excellence in Trauma Services for the Underserved: Policy, Advocacy from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.