Jacek Debiec, M.D., Ph.D., is a child and adolescent psychiatry resident at the NYU Child Study Center, an associate research scientist at the Center for Neural Science at NYU, and an associate researcher at the Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Krakow, Poland. His clinical interests include the treatment and prevention of anxiety disorders, emotion, memory, and the neurobiology of trauma. Dr. Debiec’s research focuses on the neural mechanisms involved in the acquisition and storage of emotional memories with an emphasis on memory reconsolidation processes.

Dr. Debiec received his M.D. and Ph.D. from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland where he also completed his residency in general psychiatry. He earned his M.Phil. and Ph.D. in the philosophy of science from John Paul II Pontifical University where he studied with Dr. Michael Heller. Dr. Debiec completed postdoctoral training in neuroscience at the NYU Center for Neural Science in the laboratory of Dr. Joseph LeDoux and residency training in general psychiatry at the NYU School of Medicine.

Dr. Debiec is on the editorial board of Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. He serves as a reviewer for several journals in psychiatry and neuroscience and has authored and co-authored three books. Dr. Debiec has published in a variety of journals, including Nature Neuroscience, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, Neuron, Journal of Neuroscience, Learning and Memory, Neuroscience, and Hippocampus, among others. He is a member of the American Psychiatric Association, Society for Neuroscience, Neuroethics Society, and New York Academy of Sciences. Dr. Debiec has been the recipient of many honors and awards including the Outstanding Resident Award from NIMH, the New Investigator Award from the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research, the Fulbright Fellowship from the Polish-US Fulbright Commission, and the Herder Fellowship from the Toepfer Foundation in Germany.

In 2011 Dr. Debiec was also awarded the Young Investigator grant award from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD) to examine how fears are passed from generation to generation. NARSAD's Young Investigator Award Program provides support for the most promising young scientists conducting neurobiological research. Additionally, he will receive the Donald F. Klein Early Career Investigator Award from the Anxiety Disorders Association of America (ADAA) in March at their annual meeting. This award is given to an early career investigator for the best original research paper on neurobiology, psychopharmacology, psychosocial treatments, or experimental psychopathology of anxiety and anxiety-related disorders.