James Gibbs received the MD degree from the Medical College, Medical University of South Carolina in 1964. While attending medical school, he participated in surgical research, including a research externship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston with organ transplant pioneer and Nobel Laureate Joseph Murray, MD. Following a year of residency training in General Surgery at the University of Michigan Hospital, Dr. Gibbs volunteered for duty with the US Army Special Forces, serving two years (1965-1967) abroad as a General Medical Officer. He then completed a residency in Psychiatry at The Payne Whitney Clinics, The New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Cornell Medical Center in New York City. Once again, throughout advanced medical training, he conducted basic research, this time in the behavioral neuroscience of motivated behavior.

Dr. Gibbs remained in New York as a full-time member of the Cornell University Medical College faculty and The New York-Presbyterian Hospital staff, rising to the ranks of Professor of Psychiatry and Attending Psychiatrist, respectively. Throughout his career at Cornell Medical Center, he conducted basic and clinical research in the neurobiology of motivated behavior, specializing in the physiological controls of ingestive behaviors—work funded continuously by the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Gibbs is the recipient of numerous private and federal research awards and honors; he is an internationally recognized leader in the neuroendocrinology of satiation and satisfaction. He retired from Cornell Medical Center as Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry.

As a “working retiree”, Dr. Gibbs undertook additional, specialized clinical training in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Following this, Dr. Gibbs returned to South Carolina to practice clinical psychiatry in 2009, where he continues to treat underserved patients in Community Mental Health Clinics across the state.