Celso Arango - Biography#
Professor Celso Arango is currently Chair of the Child and Adolescent Department of Psychiatry at Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón, Complutense University in Madrid, Spain, as well as Director of the Gregorio Marañón Psychiatric and Mental Health Institute, Professor of Psychiatry at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center of the University of Maryland in Baltimore, Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at UCSF in San Francisco, Visiting Professor of Psychiatry at Kings College London, and Tenured Full Professor at Complutense University in Madrid.
He completed his medical studies in 1992 at the University of Oviedo and Manchester University and earned his PhD in Psychiatry from Complutense University in 1997. His research focuses on the neurobiology of early-onset psychoses and neurodevelopmental psychopharmacology, earning him over 80 awards.
Dr. Arango leads one of the largest cohorts of pediatric first-episode psychosis patients worldwide, publishing over 150 papers from this cohort of more than 450 children and adolescents. He developed PIENSA, an early intervention program for first-episode psychosis patients and their families, validated in a randomized clinical trial and implemented in Europe and the US. He also pioneered research on pediatric psychopharmacology and antipsychotic side effects, contributing to landmark studies in this field. He has facilitated the change in FDA, EMA policies for psychotropic drugs for pediatric indications. He was influential in facilitating regulatory agency policies changes requiring companies to conduct pediatric investigations as part of a new drug’s development.
With over 740 peer-reviewed publications (H-index: 105, >43,500 citations), his work appears in high-impact journals such as Nature, Lancet Psychiatry, and Molecular Psychiatry. He has advanced the field of primary prevention in mental disorders.
Professor Arango was the first Scientific Director of CIBERSAM, coordinating 23 centers and 400 researchers, and played a key role in developing the European Commission’s roadmap for mental health research. He has led 11 EU-funded projects (e.g., EU-GEI, OPTiMiSE, AIMS-2-TRIALS), securing over €200 million in funding, and participated in 85+ competitively funded projects (including NIH and Wellcome Trust funded projects).
He served as President of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (2016 - 2020), Chairman of the Spanish Psychiatry and Mental Health Society, and is currently Secretary of the Schizophrenia International Research Society. He has been elected as an international member of the US National Academy of Medicine and the Spanish Royal Academy of Medicine, and recently received the Margarita Salas Award for his scientific career.
Professor Arango’s leadership bridges European and US psychiatry, making him a key figure in advancing mental health research globally. He is included in Stanford University’s World’s Top 2% Scientists (2022 - 2024) and the Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers list (2022–2024).
