Research Faculty

The following is listing of some of the clinical and basic research scientists within the UCSF Department of Psychiatry.

Faculty members: If you are not included on this page and would like to be, please send an email to [email protected] with a brief description of your research focus.

Erin C. Accurso, PhD - treatment outcome for youth with eating disorders, mental health services research, dissemination and implementation

Bibhav Acharya, MD - global mental health, implementation and assessment of mental health services provided by non-specialists

Brian T. Anderson, MD, MSc - mutual aid, addiction, end of life, drug ethnography, anthropology of religion, science technology studies

Shea Andrews, PhD - understanding the role of Alzheimer’s disease genetic and non-genetic risk loci in cognitive decline, as well as creating predictive models for assessing the risk of individuals in developing dementia

Joaquin A. Anguera, PhD - characterizing and remediating cognitive control deficiencies using digital technologies

Deborah E. Barnes, PhD, MPH - identification of factors that may protect against dementia and other geriatric neuropsychiatric disorders

Steven L. Batki, MD - psychopharmacology clinical trials in addictive disorders including alcohol, stimulants, and opioids, with a focus on impulsivity and co-occurring disorders such as PTSD and traumatic brain injury

Joshua Berke, PhD - basic neurobiology of reward learning, motivation and decision-making, and their relationships to addiction

Renée L. Binder, MD - violence and suicide risk assessment, criminalization of the mentally ill

Somer Bishop, PhD - behavioral phenotyping of individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) across the lifespan, differential diagnosis between ASD and neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD), moderators (especially sex, age, IQ, and language) of ASD symptom manifestation and symptom measurement

Brian Borsari, PhD - development and implementation of brief motivational interventions, social influences on substance use, mHealth, and in-session processes of behavior change

William Byerley, MD - molecular genetic studies of schizophrenia and Manic Depressive Disorder

Amy L. Byers, PhD, MPH - epidemiology of late-life mental health

Sabrina Darrow, PhD - youth psychotherapy research, clinical utility of behavioral assessments, implementation and services research

Kevin L. Delucchi, PhD - statistics, drug abuse, alcohol, clinical trials

Tomasso Di Ianni, PhD - harnessing the medical benefits of translational modalities like ultrasound imaging and therapeutic focused ultrasound to make a substantial impact on the treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders

Elissa S. Epel, PhD - cell aging, psychoneuroendocrinology, stress and coping, insulin resistant syndrome (aka Metabolic Syndrome)

Jennifer Felder, PhD - women’s health during pregnancy and early parenting, including novel risk factors for depression and interventions for poor sleep

Judith Ford, PhD - brain imaging (fMRI and EEG) in schizophrenia

Susanna Fryer, PhD - i) applying MRI and EEG techniques to study cognitive features and brain alterations that underlie risk for, and conversion to, psychopathology (with an emphasis on motivation and self-control) and ii) the brain-based mechanisms of psychotherapeutic intervention

Lisa Gunaydin, PhD - basic neuroscience of circuit dysfunction in anxiety disorders

Lauren Haack, PhD - accessible and culturally appropriate evidence-based services for vulnerable youth and families worldwide

Melissa Hagan, PhD - how stress and adversity in childhood impact functioning at different stages of the life span, particularly the parent-child relationship, intergenerational processes of risk and resilience, and the design of effective family-based interventions

Sharon M. Hall, PhD - behavioral and pharmacological treatment of substance abuse

Robert Hendren, DO - primary areas of research and publication interests are translational clinical pharmacology and nutritional trials using biomarkers (MRI, measures of inflammation, oxidative stress, immune function and pharmacogenomics) in neurodevelopmental disorders.

Stephen P. Hinshaw, PhD - developmental psychopathology, risk and protective factors in the development of behavioral and emotional disorders, mechanisms underlying improved outcomes in clinical trials, the stigmatization of mental illness and its prevention

Fumiko Hoeft, MD, PhD - genetic, prenatal and postnatal influences on children's brain development; investigation of neuroimaging as a biomarker of outcome; brain basis of neurodevelopment, its disorders such as dyslexia and autism, and skill acquisition such as reading and second language acquisition, using MRS, MRI, MEG and tDCS/TMS; impact of anxiety and motivation on learning and influence of social interventions such as mentoring

Mardi J. Horowitz, MD - impact of stress, loss, defense mechanisms, identity and person-schematic change processes.

Gary Humfleet, PhD - substance abuse treatment with emphasis on nicotine dependence, LGBT health issues, HIV, substance abuse treatment, clinical trials methology, internet-based interventions

Sabra S. Inslicht, PhD - PTSD neurobiology, neuroendocrinology, fear conditioning, sex differences

Reese T. Jones, MD - drug dependence

Raj K. Kalapatapu, MD, PhD - substance use disorders, cognition, emergency psychiatry, epidemiology, biostatistics, data analysis

Young Shin Kim, MD, PhD - genetic epidemiology of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), developmental psychopathology, bullying, suicide, stigma (social death), public health policy

Rachel Kramer, PhD - evaluating protective factors against eating disorder development, understanding factors that impact eating disorder treatment and symptom severity, and studying the impact of eating disorders on families

Andrew Krystal, MD, MS - sleep disorders, mood and anxiety spectrum disorders

Daniel Le Grange, PhD - psychosocial treatment outcomes research for adolescents with eating disorders

Kaja LeWinn, DSc - identifying modifiable characteristics of the social environment that may be targeted to promote resilience to mental health disorders in community based settings like schools

Alicia F. Lieberman, PhD - mental health problems and traumatic stress responses in infancy and early childhood; attachment disorders, parenting problems in the birth-to-five age range, treatment outcome research to close the gap in evidence-based treatment for minority young children and their families

Rachel Loewy, PhD - schizophrenia; prodromal psychosis; recent-onset psychosis; transitional age youth; clinical assessment; community partnerships

Thomas L. Lowe, MD - Tourette's Disorder

Scott Mackin, PhD - assessment of cognitive functioning pre and post treatment; identifying cognitive phenotypes of psychiatric disorders; identifying neuropsychiatric symptoms of underlying neurodegenerative disease in older adults; evaluating the ipact of cognitive impairment and depression on functional status; training on the use and interpretation of cognitive screening tools

Christina Mangurian, MD - mental health services research, schizophrenia, metabolic effects of antipsychotic medications, health disparities research.

Devanand Manoli, MD, PhD - basic neuroscience approaches to understand the neurobiology of social attachment, and how this is disrupted in the context of neuropsychiatric illness

Ashley E. Mason, PhD - the biological and psychological experiences of reward-driven eating

Carmen L. Masson, PhD - drug abuse and HIV prevention, health services research and nicotine dependence

Daniel Mathalon, PhD, MD - functional MRI and EEG/event-related potential studies of schizophrenia, including prodromal period prior to illness onset. Focus on neural correlates of sensory, perceptual, cognitive and clinical symptoms of psychosis.

Caravella McCuistian, PhD, MA - tobacco usage and cessation, and racial equity in substance use disorder treatment

Keith McBurnett, PhD - hormonal factors in disruptive behavior disorders, developmental psychopathology, classification and treatment outcome

Susan Meffert, MD, MPH - global mental health treatment and implementation research for the most common disorders among adults in low and middle income countries (depression and anxiety). Recent and current trials with Darfur refugees in Cairo, Sichuan earthquake survivors and HIV+ women in Kenya affected by gender based violence

Brian Mohlenhoff, MD - posttraumatic stress disorder and the effects of poor sleep in military veterans using brain imaging techniques

Anna Victoria Molofsky, MD, PhD - the role of glial cells in brain development and synapse formation

J. Craig Nelson, MD - late-life depression and treatment-resistant depression

Thomas C. Neylan, MD - PTSD neurobiology and treatment research, sleep-wake physiology, daytime fatigue and performance, neuroendocrinology, gene microarray, brain imaging, and Phase II & III clinical trials.

Aoife O'Donovan, MPsychSc, PhD - identifying the psychological and biological factors that account for the adverse effects of psychological stress, and ultimately driving the development of targeted interventions to reduce such negative effects of stress

Joe Pierre, MD - schizophrenia and early intervention for young persons at high risk for psychosis

Linda J. Pfiffner, PhD - treatment outcome for ADHD and related disruptive behavior problems, development of integrated home-school interventions for ADHD-Inattentive Type and the role of family factors in developmental models of child psychopathology

Aric A. Prather, PhD - sleep, stress, psychoneuroimmunology, social determinants of health

Erin Reilly, PhD - characterizing maintenance mechanisms and shared features of anxiety and eating disorders, and adapting behavioral treatments to meet the needs of non-responders

Victor I. Reus, MD - behavioral endocrinology, particularly endocrine effects of stress and behavioral effects of CRF, ACTH and glucocorticoids, genetics of bipolar mood disorder, genetics of Tourette Disorder; pharmacogenetics and psychopharmacology

Anne Richards, MD, MPH - stress-related sleep disturbances and mental illness

Demian Rose, MD, PhD - early psychosis, clinical outcome measures, psychotherapy for psychosis

Danielle Roubinov, PhD - pathways and mechanisms through which exposure to adversity early in life shapes children’s trajectories of physical and psychological health

John L.R. Rubenstein, MD, PhD - development of the forebrain

Stephan J. Sanders, PhD, BMBS - bioinformatic and genomic approaches to understanding the etiology of neuropsychiatric disorders, particularly Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Intellectual Disability (ID). Research topics include: gene discovery, mechanism of sex bias, contribution of multiple risk factors, and convergence of gene function to identify pathology.

Derek D. Satre, PhD - alcohol and drug treatment services research, treatment access, effects of drinking on health, psychotherapy, psychiatric comorbidity

Danielle Schlosser, PhD - neuroscience-informed digital health interventions to treat motivational impairments in individuals with schizophrenia and depression

Martha Shumway, PhD - mental health services research, measurement, preference/utility assessment, cost-effectiveness analysis, schizophrenia, research design, data analysis, mixed methods research, cognition, trauma, posttraumatic stress disorder, co-occuring conditions, psychiatric and medical emergency services, involuntary treatment, public sector care, underserved populations

Vikaas Sohal, MD, PhD - basic science research about how microcircuits in the prefrontal cortex process information, and how this may be disrupted in psychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia

James L. Sorensen, PHD - substance abuse and mental health, prevention and treatment of AIDS and other infectious diseases

Matthew W. State, MD, PhD - genetics and genomics of developmental neuropsychiatric disorders, with a particular interest in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Tourette Disorder (TD), and Childhood-Onset Schizophrenia (COS)

Irina Strigo, PhD - brain imaging (FMRI, DTI, ASL, PET-MR) of emotional pain in depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress, traumatic brain injury; pain vulnerability in psychiatric disorders

Laurence H. Tecott, MD, PhD - molecular genetics of serotonin system regulation of behavior

Jason Thompson, PhD - trauma recovery, contemplative neuroscience, integrative medicine, and global mental health

Marina Tolou-Shams, PhD - developing evidence-based mental health, substance abuse and HIV risk reduction interventions for court-involved, non-incarcerated (CINI) juvenile offenders

D. Andrew Tompkins, MD, MHS - pain treatment in persons on medication- assisted treatment, behavioral pharmacology, medications development for substance use disorders, opioid use disorder treatment linkage and integration

Jeanne M. Tschann, PhD - family relationships and adolescent functioning, relationship dynamics and condom use among Latino adolescents, obesity among Mexican American children, research with Latino populations

Janice Y. Tsoh, PhD - nicotine dependence treatment in special populations, co-occurring mental and substance use disorders

Susan M. Voglmaier, MD, PhD - cellular and molecular neurobiology, vesicle trafficking and neurotransmitter release

Constance M. Weisner, DrPH, MSW - alcohol and drug epidemiology, access and utilization, treatment outcome and cost effectiveness

Daniel S. Weiss, PhD - phenomenology and psychosocial treatment of PTSD in emergency personnel

Lauren A. Weiss, PhD - understanding the genetic and molecular basis of autism

Owen M. Wolkowitz, MD - psychoneuroendocrinology, particularly effects of stress and stress hormones on the brain (glucocorticoids, neurosteroids, neurotropic factors), psychopharmacology of depression and anxiety

Josh D. Woolley, MD, PhD - understanding the mechanisms and effects of oxytocin and psychedelic compounds to find new therapeutic treatments for a variety of psychiatric conditions, including schizophrenia, mood, disorders, chronic pain, mood symptoms in Parkinson's disease, PTSD, and substance abuse

Kristine Yaffe, MD - understanding the mechanisms that cause cognitive decline, identifying novel risk factors for cognitive impairment, and looking for strategies to prevent and treat cognitive disorders

Tony Y. Yang, MD, PhD - translational research in adolescent and general adult depression using state-of-the-art functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) methods to understand the underlying neurobiology of depression and translate this understanding into helping improve the clinical diagnosis and treatment

Mark von Zastrow, MD, PhD - cellular neurobiology, psychopharmacology and drug abuse