Rate My Professor Hamed Ekhtiari

Hamed Ekhtiari, MD, PhD, is a physician-scientist resident on the Physician Scientist track in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Medical School. He completed his MD at the School of Medicine and PhD in neuroimaging at Tehran University of Medical Sciences in Iran. Dr. Ekhtiari's lab at the University of Minnesota focuses on reshaping the future of addiction treatment by integrating brain imaging with non-invasive brain stimulation technologies, such as transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), alongside cognitive training interventions. His research emphasizes advancing precision neuromodulation for substance use disorders through methodological improvements in concurrent neuroimaging and stimulation studies.

Dr. Ekhtiari serves as Co-Director of the International Network of tES/TMS Trials for Addiction Medicine (INTAM), secretary of the Global Expert Network at the International Society of Addiction Medicine (ISAM GEN), and co-chair of the ISAM neuroscience section. He received a national award for his work as associate editor of the Iranian Textbook of Psychiatry and provides editorial support for Current Addiction Reports and other journals. Previously, he served as principal investigator on multiple projects at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research, securing grants, mentoring postdocs and graduate students, and teaching PhD and MSc courses at the Institute for Cognitive Science Studies in Tehran. He organizes the International Cognitive Neuroscience Online Course with participants from 20 countries. Dr. Ekhtiari has authored numerous peer-reviewed articles, several as first author, three book chapters including contributions to Brain-Healing First Aid, and delivered oral and poster presentations worldwide. Key publications include 'Transcranial electrical and magnetic stimulation (tES and TMS) for addiction medicine: a consensus paper on the present state of the science and the road ahead' (2019), 'A methodological checklist for fMRI drug cue reactivity studies' (2022), and 'A checklist for assessing the methodological quality of concurrent tES-fMRI studies (ContES checklist)' (2025). His contributions have established reporting standards and guidelines, enhancing reproducibility and clinical translation in addiction neuroscience.