Psychiatry Department Faculty Research

Dr. Brady is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Psychiatry at BIDMC. His research is focused on improving our understanding of the neural circuit basis of symptomatology in psychotic disorders and bipolar disorder. Using functional Magnetic Imaging (fMRI), Dr. Brady and colleagues explore how neural circuits mediate different symptomatic states, and seek to empirically test these circuit-symptom relationships by selectively modulating circuit activity using repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS).

Dr. Cunningham is a Member of the Faculty at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School and is the new Director of the Center for Sleep and Cognition. Tony's primary research focus is understanding the role of sleep and sleep loss in emotion and memory processing, and how knowledge of these systems can be applied to both healthy and clinical populations. His long-term research goal is to understand changes in underlying brain networks responsible for emotional processing following sleep loss, and translate this knowledge into the development of novel and effective therapeutic interventions.

Dr. Friedman-Yakoobian is the clinic director of the Center for Early Detection, Assessment and Response to Risk Clinic for youth ages 12-30 who are showing signs of clinical high risk (possible prodrome) for psychosis. Her program of research has focused on the development and implementation of effective psychosocial interventions for individuals experiencing psychosis (or signs of risk) and their families. These have included family interventions, cognitive remediation, school and work coaching, and acceptance and commitment therapy. Psychology interns with interest and background in these areas may have opportunities for contributing to data analysis and development of poster and paper presentations.

Dr. Hill is an addiction psychiatrist and the director of the Division of Addiction Psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. In recent years, Dr. Hill's group has been involved in research related to multiple substances including opioids, alcohol, and cannabis. He has evaluated both ends of the cannabis spectrum, studying both pharmacotherapies for cannabis use disorder as well as the therapeutic use of cannabinoids. His group is collaborating currently with colleagues in gastroenterology, genetics, neurology, and psychiatry. His group has also collaborated with multiple organizations to develop evidence-based cannabis policy.

Dr. Lizano is the director of the translational neuroscience division, in the Department of Psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he also serves as a staff neuropsychiatrist and assistant professor. Dr. Lizano is active in creating a translational neuroscience approach to understanding psychotic disorders, in particular focusing on how clinical investigations can inform basic stem cell research, with the potential for identifying novel and disease modifying therapies. He also directs a first episode psychosis clinic. He has published over 40 peer original articles and 3 books chapters on these various topic. He serves as deputy editor for the Harvard Review of Psychiatry and associate editor for Schizophrenia Research.

Dr. Keshavan is the Stanley Cobb Professor of Psychiatry at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; Harvard Medical School, and also Academic Head for the department. Dr. Keshavan is closely involved in research in neurobiology of psychosis, especially as it pertains to first episode psychotic disorders. His research has resulted in over 700 publications to date, including over 550 peer-reviewed papers, 4 books, and 100 reviews/book chapters. He has several funded grants. His main areas of research include the neurodevelopmental basis of schizophrenia, neuroimaging, and early intervention.

Dr. Mesholam-Gately has a research program that is broadly focused on better understanding and improving neurocognitive and reward-related impairments in schizophrenia-spectrum illnesses (including cognitive remediation efforts), as well as to the enhancement of mental health research through collaboration with individuals who have lived experience with mental illness (through her direction of a Consumer Advisory Board (CAB) at MMHC). Examples of research opportunities include contributing to a manuscript related to the relationship of hedonic experience to improvement in cognitive remediation, participating in twice monthly CAB meetings, co-authoring a manuscript on the relationship between therapeutic alliance and quality of life (based on a CAB study, which used questionnaires the group developed), participating in a CAB project to potentially rename schizophrenia, which involves dissemination of a "renaming survey" the group developed and eventual writing of papers on our findings.

Dr. Stone is an associate professor of psychology in the Harvard Medical School Department of Psychiatry who directs the Fellowship in Clinical Neuropsychology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and the Massachusetts Mental Health Center (MMHC). He also directs the neuropsychology training and clinical services programs, and the Psychosis Research Program, both at MMHC. His research focuses on the identification and amelioration of risk factors for psychosis, with an emphasis on cognition. He is the principal investigator on two longitudinal studies identifying prodromal syndromes for psychosis and is involved in the effort to develop and improve individualized ‘risk calculators' for psychosis". Dr. Stone is also an investigator on a study in Ningxia, China, that is assessing relationships between cognitive performance and duration of untreated psychosis in a unique sample of community dwelling, rural Chinese subjects who went untreated for periods of up to 58 years. Research opportunities include data analysis, professional presentations and co-authoring of manuscripts for publication.

Dr. Torous is director of the digital psychiatry division, in the Department of Psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a Harvard Medical School affiliated teaching hospital, where he also serves as a staff psychiatrist and assistant professor. He has a background in electrical engineering and computer sciences and received an undergraduate degree in the field from UC Berkeley before attending medical school at UC San Diego. He completed his psychiatry residency, fellowship in clinical informatics, and master's degree in biomedical informatics at Harvard. Dr. Torous is active in investigating the potential of mobile mental health technologies for psychiatry and has published over 200 peer reviewed articles and 5 books chapters on the topic. He serves as editor-in-chief for an academic journal on technology and mental health, JMIR Mental Health, web editor for JAMA Psychiatry, and currently leads the American Psychiatric Association's work group on the evaluation of smartphone apps.

Dr. Yen is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School and the Director of Clinical Psychology Training Program and has research based at both MMHC and Brown University. She is also currently the President of the North American Society for the Study of Personality Disorders. Her research focuses on identifying risk factors and developing interventions for suicidal behaviors in adolescents and adults. As an investigator on prospective, longitudinal studies of youth with bipolar disorder, adults with personality disorders, and suicidal adolescents, Dr. Yen has examined prospective predictors of suicidal behavior. She has been continuously funded as a Principal Investigator on NIH studies for the past 20 years. She is currently the PI of a multi-site R01 on an acceptance based multi-modal positive affect intervention for young adult outpatients which utilizes test messaging to enhance skills practice. She has also conducted research to examine mechanisms of suicide risk in sexual minority adolescents. Research opportunities include co-authoring manuscripts on one of the projects described above, or on a manuscript using archival medical records data from MMHC.