Hans-Ulrich Wittchen (born 6 July 1951 in Bad Salzuflen) is a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist and epidemiologist. He has been a head of the Institute of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy and the Center of Clinical Epidemiology and Longitudinal Studies (CELOS) at the Technische Universität Dresden. Since 2018, he is leading the research group "Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy Research" at the Psychiatric Clinic of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and directs the IAP-TU Dresden GmbH in Dresden. Biography and education After graduating at the Freiherr-von-Stein-Gymnasium in Leverkusen in 1968, Wittchen studied Medicine and Psychology in Vienna, Austria. He began his career as a research assistant in the Department of Psychiatry in the Psychiatric University Hospital in Vienna (1973–1976). In Vienna, Hans-Ulrich Wittchen was in charge of introduction of behavioral therapy methods at Anton Proksch Institute and Ludwig-Boltzmann Institute. He earned his PhD in 1975 with a thesis on clinical significance of biofeedback methods in the faculty of psychology, Vienna University. In addition he completed his psychotherapy training licensed by the German Behavioral Therapists Association and the Österreichische Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Verhaltenstherapie; in 2000 he received his "Approbation" according to German law. 1976 Prof. Wittchen worked at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim and was appointed project leader in 1978, in the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry (MPI-P) in Munich. In 1984, he completed his habilitation for clinical psychology at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich with publication and a monograph on "Course and Outcome of Treated and Untreated Anxiety and Depressive Disorders". While remaining head of the MPI-P research department, he was appointed as Professor of Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy in 1984 at the University of Mannheim, where he founded the “Psychotherapy Outpatient Department” and the Institutes psychophysiological lab. 1989, Hans-Ulrich Wittchen took a sabbatical to support the World Health Organization's (WHO) division of Mental Health and the United States Department of Health and Human Services (ADAMHA) department in completing the WHO-ICD-10[9] classification and the US-DSM-III-R[8] systems, developing diagnostic tools and conducting supplementary studies. 1990 he was appointed as Director of the "Department of Clinical Psychology and Epidemiology" at the MPI-P in Munich. Throughout his professional career, Wittchen repeatedly was "visiting scientist" and "visiting professor" at the National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, USA, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, USA and the Harvard University in Boston (US), where he collaborated with Lee Robins, Ron Kessler and Darrel Regier on the development of diagnostic