The UCSF Department of Psychiatry's 2020 Graduation Commencement Ceremony was held on Friday, June 19, 2020 to recognize and celebrate the accomplishments of our residents, fellows, interns, and other trainees. An archived version is now available for viewing.
To watch the broadcast, simply click on the red play button in the window below. If you are encountering any difficulties with this page, you can also view the ceremony directly on YouTube.
Also below is a copy of our official commencement program. You can flip through the program and zoom in or out using controls on the page, open the program in a fullscreen window, or download a copy to view on your device.
About this year's commencement speaker
Marina Tolou-Shams, PhD, is a professor and deputy vice chair for research in the UCSF Department of Psychiatry, as well as the director of the Division of Infant, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (ZSFG). She also leads the UCSF Juvenile Justice Behavioral Health lab, a research team focused on developing and testing evidence-based mental health, substance use, and HIV risk reduction interventions for community-supervised, justice-involved youth and foster care youth.
Dr. Tolou-Shams received her PhD in clinical psychology in 2004 from the University of Illinois at Chicago and completed her postdoctoral clinical and research training through the Brown University Psychology Training Consortium. She is trained as a pediatric and forensic psychologist and has many years of clinical experience in assessing and treating underserved adolescents and their families. Over the past decade, her roles have included serving as the director of the Rhode Island Family Court Juvenile Mental Health Clinic, director of the Substance Abuse Treatment Service at the Rhode Island Training School, and assistant director of the Rhode Island Hospital Forensic Psychiatry Evaluation Service. She is currently the principal or co-investigator of several National Institute of Health-funded trials aimed toward improving behavioral health outcomes and reducing health disparities for justice-involved youth, including a specific emphasis on trauma-informed, gender-responsive interventions for girls.
Dr. Tolou-Shams and her colleagues are developing and testing digital health interventions that leverage the use of technology—such as SMS texting, apps, family-based telehealth, and social media—to improve access to and engagement in substance use and mental health treatment for system-involved youth and families. She is also the recipient of a National Institute on Drug Abuse mid-career development award that supports her passion for mentoring trainees and faculty, particularly to conduct their own research in the areas of adolescent substance use, mental health, and juvenile justice.
About UCSF Psychiatry
The UCSF Department of Psychiatry, UCSF Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital, and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, with a mission focused on clinical care, education, research, and advocacy.
UCSF Psychiatry conducts its clinical, educational and research efforts at a variety of locations in Northern California, including UCSF campuses at Parnassus Heights, Mission Bay and Laurel Heights, UCSF Medical Center, UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, the San Francisco VA Health Care System, and UCSF Fresno.
On July 1, 2020, the department will change its name to the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences to more accurately reflect the multitude of important behavioral health disciplines that contribute to its work to advance mental health across the life span.
About the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
The UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established by the extraordinary generosity of Joan and Sanford I. "Sandy" Weill, brings together world-class researchers with top-ranked physicians to solve some of the most complex challenges in the human brain.
The UCSF Weill Institute leverages UCSF’s unrivaled bench-to-bedside excellence in the neurosciences. It unites three UCSF departments—Neurology, Psychiatry, and Neurological Surgery—that are highly esteemed for both patient care and research, as well as the Neuroscience Graduate Program, a cross-disciplinary alliance of nearly 100 UCSF faculty members from 15 basic-science departments, as well as the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, a multidisciplinary research center focused on finding effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.
About UCSF
UC San Francisco (UCSF) is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes top-ranked graduate schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy; a graduate division with nationally renowned programs in basic, biomedical, translational and population sciences; and a preeminent biomedical research enterprise.
It also includes UCSF Health, which comprises three top-ranked hospitals—UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland—as well as Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital, UCSF Benioff Children’s Physicians, and the UCSF Faculty Practice. UCSF Health has affiliations with hospitals and health organizations throughout the Bay Area. UCSF faculty also provide all physician care at the public Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, and the San Francisco VA Medical Center. The UCSF Fresno Medical Education Program is a major branch of the University of California, San Francisco’s School of Medicine.