Biography

Joseph Ventura, PhD, is a faculty member of the UCLA Department of Psychiatry, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. Dr. Ventura is the Director of the Assessment and Functional Outcome Core and Director of the Cognitive Remediation program at the UCLA Aftercare Research Program. Dr. Ventura has obtained research funding from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia (NARSAD), and the pharmaceutical industry to study diagnostic and symptom assessment, longitudinal course, and functional outcomes in schizophrenia and related conditions. Dr. Ventura has published research in First Episode Schizophrenia patients on cognitive remediation training, predictors of course and functional outcome, stressful life events, positive and negative symptoms, disorganization, insight, and neurocognition. Areas of recent interest include recovery from schizophrenia, biomarkers, social cognition, and the development of interview-based assessments of cognitive functioning. Dr Ventura played a major role in the development and publication of methods for standardizing diagnostic and psychiatric symptom assessment training and quality assurance. His latest project for which he has received support from the US Fulbright Scholar program and the NIMH involves the development of an early intervention, RCT of Cognitive Remediation Training compared with Enhanced-TAU for CHR individuals in Tunisia, North Africa.