Dr. Ian A. Cook is the founding Director and CEO of the Los Angeles TMS Institute and a Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and of Bioengineering at UCLA. His career has largely focused on improving the treatment of mental illnesses and disorders of complex human behavior by working at the interface between medicine and technology.

In his 25+ year academic career at UCLA, he started the Unipolar Depression Research and Clinic Program in 2007, was named the inaugural holder of the Joanne and George Miller and Family Endowed Chair in Depression Research at the Brain Research Institute in 2008, treated the first patient in his UCLA TMS Treatment Service in March 2009, and served as a member of the rTMS Task Group of the National Network of Depression Centers. He served as Chief of Staff of the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital and was elected Chair of the Faculty of the David Geffen School of Medicine. He also served as Chief Translational Innovation Officer for the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior.

In addition to his work with TMS, he developed a new treatment modality, trigeminal nerve stimulation (TNS), which has received FDA clearance for the treatment of ADHD. He has been recognized as an inventor on over 30 U.S. patents for biomedical devices and systems, spanning biomarkers to guide treatment selection, neuromodulation treatment systems, endovascular devices, orthopedic systems to treat osteoporosis, and health IT systems to support remote patient monitoring (e.g., for hypertension and diabetes).

For many years he was a member of the Executive Committee on Practice Guidelines of the American Psychiatric Association, helping guide their dissemination of evidence-based practices in psychiatry. Nationally, he also served as a standing member of the NIH’s ITVA Review Committee (“Interventions Committee for Adult Disorders”).

He left UCLA in 2018 to start the Los Angeles TMS Institute and bring advanced treatment modalities out of the laboratory and into clinical care in Southern California.

Dr. Cook received his undergraduate degree in engineering from Princeton University and graduated from the Yale School of Medicine before coming to UCLA for his residency at the joint UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and West LA Veterans Administration Medical Center psychiatry residency program. He then completed an NIMH T32 Research Fellowship before joining the UCLA faculty.

His professional affiliations include being a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and one of the inaugural Fellows of the Clinical TMS Society. He joined the Board of the CTMSS in 2013, has been co-chair of its Legal, Business, and Ethics Committee for many years, and received the CTMSS President’s Award in 2021. He is Vice President and a founding Board Member of the Foundation for the Advancement of Clinical TMS.