Dr. Miranda is a board-certified clinical psychologist and professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior (DPHB) in the Warren Alpert Medical School and professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences in the School of Public Health.
He has committed his career as a clinician scientist to advancing our understanding of how addiction develops and progresses during adolescence, with the ultimate goal of advancing clinical practice. As both a clinician and a scientist, he understands intimately the day-to-day clinical management of substance use disorders in youth along with the shortcomings of the best available therapies and areas that warrant research attention.
He directs a federally funded research program, now in its 23rd year of continuous NIH funding, on the treatment of adolescents with substance use and co-occurring mental health disorders, with a special focus on testing new pharmacological and technology-supported interventions and using novel strategies to monitor how adolescents behave in their natural environment. He has served as principal investigator, co-investigator, or mentor on over 55 federally funded research projects. In addition, Dr. Miranda has served on and chaired numerous study sections at the National Institutes of Health.
He has a strong history of mentoring early-career clinicians and scientists. He is the training director of two postdoctoral training programs (T32 AA07459, T32 DA016184) at the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies. He is also a core faculty member in the Brown University Clinical Psychology Training Consortium. In 2016 and 2020, Dr. Miranda was honored to receive the Mark Wood Outstanding Mentor Award. In 2022, he received the DPHB Education Committee Award for his dedication to the clinical and scientific development of trainees.
Dr. Miranda remains heavily active in providing direct clinical services to adolescents. In tandem with his scholarly work, Dr. Miranda founded and directs the intensive outpatient program (Vista) for adolescents with co-occurring disorders at Bradley Hospital – the nation’s first child and adolescent psychiatric hospital. The program is the premier adolescent substance use treatment service and training clinic in the region, and in 2021, SAMHSA designated Vista a model program for youth with co-occurring disorders.
