Robert J. Ursano, MD, who completed a fellowship in the Yale Department of Psychiatry, will retire as chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) after more than 24 years in the position.
Ursano will remain as the director of USU’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress (CSTS). He established the center in 1987. It is a national resource for disaster responders and for communities addressing natural disasters, community violence, terrorism, body recovery and worker stress, and public health threats.
Ursano graduated the University of Notre Dame, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He graduated from Yale University School of Medicine on an Air Force health professions scholarship in 1973. He completed his psychiatry residency at Wilford Hall U.S. Air Force Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, and later returned to Yale for his fellowship training.
His first assignment was at the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine in San Antonio, where he began his work on traumatic stress, working with Air Force Vietnam-era Prisoners of War. He joined the USU faculty in 1979 and became chair of the department in 1992. He spent more than 20 years on active duty and retired from the Air Force at the rank of Colonel in 1992.