Biography

Dr. Sean X. Luo is a dually board-certified general and addiction psychiatrist and researcher. Dr. Luo was born in Shanghai, China. He received primary and secondary education in West Lafayette, Indiana. He studied physics and mathematics at the University of Chicago and received an M.D. and a Ph.D. in theoretical and computational neuroscience from Columbia University, under Nobel laureate Richard Axel and noted theoretical neuroscientist L. F. Abbott. His work has been published in a number of leading journals, including Addiction, JAMA Psychiatry, Nature, Nature Neuroscience, the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences. He completed his clinical training in psychiatry and addiction psychiatry at NewYork Presbyterian-Columbia University Medical Center and New York State Psychiatric Institute.

Dr. Luo leads several federally and privately funded research programs, focusing on applying computational neuroscience, data science and machine learning techniques to addiction science to improve patient-treatment match. In 2023, his research group published the first individual-level prediction algorithm in opioid use disorder in JAMA Psychiatry (www.oudriskscore.org). He serves on the Data Science Task Force for The National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network and on the Leadership Institute for the US Department of Health and Human Services Opioid Response Network (ORN). Research from his team has received a number of awards, including the National Institute on Drug Abuse Mentored Career Development Award, the American Psychiatric Association/Eli Lily Resident Research Award and the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry Young Investigator Award.

In addition to his scientific and clinical work, he is engaged in raising public awareness and improving quality and access in substance use disorder treatment. His work has been profiled by media outlets including CBS News and Medscape. He was a speaker on precision addiction medicine at nerdnite: nerdtacular at Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO, Brooklyn (now Detroit). He contributes both online and in print, including a column for Rehabs.com Protalk and a blog at Psychology Today, as well as several popular magazine articles for Psychology Today and Scientific American Mind. He is routinely interviewed in popular media and his most recent media appearance was for the Daily Mail in April 2023 on tobacco vaping.

For full academic CV and publications list, click here.

For full popular media and writing porfolio, click here.