Ryan S. Sultan, MD

Ryan S. Sultan, MD, is a Columbia University psychiatrist and researcher specializing in addiction and mental health, playing a key role in the university’s initiative to combat the opioid crisis. Dr. Sultan is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry in Columbia’s Department of Psychiatry and serves as a research scientist in the Division on Substance Use Disorders. He brings to the Columbia Center for Healing of Opioid and Other Substance Use Disorders – Intervention Development and Implementation (CHOSEN) a robust background in epidemiological research and clinical innovation. Dr. Sultan’s work focuses on understanding and addressing the negative health consequences of opioid and other substance use disorders, in line with CHOSEN’s mission to develop cutting-edge prevention and treatment interventions that reduce overdose deaths and improve public health. As Director of the Mental Health Informatics Lab at Columbia, he utilizes large-scale health data and informatics to identify trends and gaps in addiction treatment, helping to shape interventions that are both effective and implementable in real-world community settings. Clinically, he is a double board-certified Adult and Child Psychiatrist known for an integrative approach to care, directing Integrative Psychiatry, which provides personalized therapy and pharmacologic treatment for youth and adults with ADHD, substance use disorders, and co-occurring conditions. 

Dr. Sultan’s dual perspective as a frontline clinician and a data-driven researcher enables him to contribute practical insights to CHOSEN’s cross-disciplinary team. He has published and presented widely on topics ranging from youth ADHD medication trends to cannabis use outcomes and novel depression treatments. Through CHOSEN, Dr. Sultan collaborates with experts across social work, medicine, and public health to translate research into action, to pioneer projects that leverage AI to save lives, including efforts to model and predict opioid overdose risk as part of the fight against the opioid epidemic.