Michael E. Tennenbaum Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Professor of Psychology, and Chief of Medical Psychology – Neuropsychology, Semel Institute, David Geffen School of Medicine and College of Letters & Science at UCLA

Dr. Bilder oversees a program with 200 faculty, staff, and trainees in the David Geffen School of Medicine and College of Letters & Science at UCLA.  Dr. Bilder received a BA at Columbia College, a PhD at City University of New York and completed internship and postdoctoral training at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and NYS Psychiatric Institute.   Before joining UCLA in 2002, Dr. Bilder held faculty appointments at Columbia and Albert Einstein College of Medicine.  Dr. Bilder has 30 years of experience in research on brain and behavior, particularly on schizophrenia and other neuropsychiatric syndromes.  Dr. Bilder’s current research focuses on transdisciplinary and translational research.  He directs the Consortium for Neuropsychiatric Phenomics (one of nine NIH Roadmap interdisciplinary research consortia across all biomedicine). Dr. Bilder also directs the Tennenbaum Center for the Biology of Creativity; is Co-Director of an NIMH-sponsored Center for Intervention Development and Applied Research focusing on translational research to enhance cognitive control; and is Co-Director of the new NCRR-supported Integrative Phenotyping Center for Neuropsychiatry at UCLA.

Nancy U. Karren Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Professor, Department of Pharmacology, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio

Dr. Bowden attended The University of Texas at Austin and earned his medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. He completed his training in psychiatry at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York, New York.

Dr. Bowden was awarded the 2001 Gerald L. Klerman Senior Investigator Award by the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance and received the 2006 Mind of America Scientific Research Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. Dr. Bowden is a Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology and the Collegium Internationale Neuro-Psychopharmacologicum, a Corresponding Member of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology and a member of the Executive Committee of the International Society for CNS Clinical Trials and Methodology. He is Associate Editor for Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica and a member of the editorial boards of Bipolar Disorders and Depression and Anxiety, Dr. Bowden is a reviewer for several journals including Archives of General Psychiatry, Biological Psychiatry, and the Journal of the American Medical Association. He has authored more than 370 publications. His research is principally on the symptomatic and biological characterization of bipolar disorders and the effectiveness and pharmacodynamics of mood stabilizing drugs. He has been principal investigator for 80 studies funded by pharmaceutical companies, NIMH, and various foundations. Dr. Bowden frequently serves as consultant to pharmaceutical companies and governmental agencies and is named in Best Doctors in the US in the area of mood disorders.

Deputy Head of Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (Bundesinstitut für Arzneimittel und Medizinprodukte)

Dr. Broich is professionally trained and board certified in Neurology, Psychiatry, Behavioral Psychotherapy. He completed a research fellowship at the Department of Nuclear Medicine at Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Broich was Vice Head in the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the Hospital of the Martin Luther University in Halle Wittenberg. Dr. Broich held the position of Head of the Section Neurology Psychiatry at the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) in Germany, and since 2005 has operated as department head for that group. He is also the German alternate member of the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) at the European Medicines Agency (EMEA).

Dr. Broich is currently engaged in research in the areas of: Neuropharmacology, Neurodegenerative Disorders, Neuroimaging, Biomarkers in drug development, Clinical trial design.

Dr. Broich maintains membership in the following learned societies: German Society of Psychiatry; Psychotherapy and Neurosciences; German Society of Gerontopsychiatry; German Society of Biological Psychiatry; German Society of Neuropsychopharmacology; European College of Neuropsychopharmacology; International Psycho]geriatric Association; American Society for Experimental Neurotherapeutics (ASENT); World Federation of Biological Psychiatry.

Dr. Broich is the author and co-author of more than 90 Publications (peer reviewed articles, reviews, book sections).

Professor of Psychiatry & Neuroscience, University of New Mexico

Graduated from Medical School (Universidad del Rosario) in Bogota, Colombia in 1986. He completed Residency training in Psychiatry at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, in 1991. After 2 years of work as a staff inpatient psychiatrist at Rusk State Hospital in Texas, he moved to Baltimore. There he completed a 3 year NIH-funded research fellowship at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center. In 1996, he joined the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico (UNM). He has been awarded several externally-funded research projects on the treatment and patho-physiology of schizophrenia, focused on understanding the neurochemical correlates of outcome in this disorder. His most recent award from NIMH, (2009-2014) examines the functional correlates of brain glutamate in schizophrenia. Dr Bustillo has over 40 peer-reviewed publications. In 2008, he received an Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for Mental Illness. He is a member of the Workgroup on Psychotic Disorders for the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM-V), scheduled to be published by the American Psychiatric Association in 2012. Dr Bustillo is a tenured Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience and directs the Schizophrenia Research Program, the Clozapine Clinic and the Spanish-Speaking Psychiatric Clinic, at the UNM Psychiatric Medical Center.

Associate Vice President, Client Services, United Biosource Corporation

Mr. Butler works in United BioSource Corporation’s Specialty Clinical Services group, which specializes in endpoint reliability services for clinical trials. Mr. Butler is responsible for all client activities at UBC, and is focused on development and support of new services for rater training and certification, ratings reliability and monitoring services, and computerized cognitive testing. Along with UBC’s senior scientific staff, Mr. Butler supports all of UBC’s research and publication efforts.

Mr. Butler has 7 years of experience working in the CNS pharmaceutical services industry. In his prior position as Associate Vice President, Creative Services, Mr. Butler led a group responsible for development of training materials for UBC’s clinician and patient training and education programs. He led a team of clinicians, multimedia developers, producers, and filmmakers with experience in clinical and documentary video production. Under Mr. Butler’s leadership, UBC has created thousands of hours of clinical training and education video, translated into more than 50 languages.

Director, Division of Adult Translational Research and Treatment Development (DATR), NIMH

Dr. Cuthbert’s research is aimed at providing an understanding of how emotions and disorders of emotional processing originate in the interplay between the brain’s most basic motivational drives. Measured differences in how individuals react to neutral and emotionally-charged images—in terms of, for example, startle reflexes, heart rate, brain activity, and verbal descriptions of emotional state—reveal how complex emotional responses are ultimately based in the brain wiring that implements fundamental survival-oriented drives. A model of how motivational processes relate to emotion provides a way to understand comorbidity among anxiety, mood, and personality disorders, and to identify risk for these disorders. Another goal is to develop diagnostic approaches that focus on symptoms that may be common to different conditions.

Dr. Cuthbert earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and psychophysiology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He served in the U.S. Army Medical Service Corps and was on the faculty for seventeen years at the University of Florida. He has also held guest professorships at the University of Giessen and the University of Tübingen in Germany. He was elected president of the Society for Psychophysiological Research in 2004 and is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.

Senior Vice President, Chief Medical Officer, United BioSource Corporation

David G. Daniel, M.D. is Senior Vice President, Chief Medical Director and Practice Leader, United BioSource Corporation and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, George Washington University. He was the founder of Bioniche Development Inc. and Global Learning, LLC and a founder and former principal of Best Practice, LLC. He served as Director of Clinical Trials for the Stanley Medical Research Institute. Dr. Daniel has received patent protection in the United States for processes for treatment of epilepsy, panic disorder and acute dystonic reactions.

Dr. Daniel graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude from Emory University. He received his medical education and residency training at Vanderbilt University where he served as Chief Resident and received the Marc Hollender Award. He was a senior staff fellow within the intramural program of the NIMH and served as Medical Director of the NIMH Neuroscience Center at Saint Elisabeths where he supervised all clinical research.

Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago

Senior Director Clinical Research, Merck & Co., Inc.

Dr. Egan received his BA from the University of Virginia and his MD from the University of Maryland.  Following residency training in psychiatry at the University of Colorado, he joined the neuropsychiatry branch of the NIMH, where he focused on translational research on the mechanism of action of antipsychotic drugs and the neurobiology of tardive dyskinesia. Subsequently, he became the Medical Director and CEO of NIMH Neuroscience Research Center at St. Elizabeth's and Acting Branch Chief, Clinical Research Services Branch. In 1996 Dr. Egan joined the Clinical Brain Disorders Branch as a principle investigator and initiated a genetic study of intermediate phenotypes in schizophrenia. His work led to the discovery of the role of genetic polymorphisms in the COMT and BDNF genes in human brain function and cognition.  His research has been recognized with several prestigious awards, including the NIMH Director’s Award, the A.E. Bennett Award of the Society for Biological Psychiatry, and was highlighted in Science as first runner up for Breakthrough of the Year in 2003.  Dr. Egan joined Merck in 2005 where he has focused on drug development in schizophrenia and Alzheimer's Disease. He is a member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology and the Society for Biological Psychiatry and has published over 130 papers in peer reviewed journals as well as numerous book chapters.

Professor of Psychiatry, University of New Mexico School of Medicine

Dr. Jan Fawcett is a graduate of Yale University School of Medicine.  Dr. Fawcett joined the Department of Psychiatry of the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, after thirty years of service as the Stanley Harris, Sr. Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Rush Medical College in Chicago. He has pursued a career of research in the treatment of affective disorders and the prevention of suicide since completing his fellowship at the National Institute of Mental Health Clinical Center in 1964. Dr Fawcett has been awarded the Dr. Jan Fawcett Humanitarian Award by the National Depressive and Manic Depressive Association (now the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance), and lifetime research awards by the American Association of Suicidology and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. He was also presented the Menninger award by the American College of Physicians for his research in mental health in 2000. More recently in 2005, Dr Fawcett shared the Falcone Prize for affective disorders research from the National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD). He is currently a principal investigator of the “Recurrent Depression Prevention with Medication and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy” project, a five-year study funded by NIMH at Rush Medical Center in collaboration with investigators at Vanderbilt and the University of Pennsylvania. He is a co-author of the APA Practice Guidelines on the assessment and management of suicidal patients and is the chairperson of the DSM-V Mood Disorders Work Group from 2007-2013. Dr. Fawcett has always maintained an active clinical practice focusing on patients with treatment resistant major affective disorders and continues to do so in his work as a Professor at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry.

Scientific Affairs, J&J North American Pharmaceuticals

Reuven Ferziger is the Washington, DC, Scientific Liaison for CNS Medical Affairs at Johnson & Johnson. Before coming to Johnson &  Johnson, Dr. Ferziger was the physician leader of behavioral health disease management for CareGroup, a network of academic medical centers and community hospitals in the Boston, Massachusetts region, and a member of the Department of Psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School. He received his undergraduate degree from Brown University and his medical degree from Albany Medical College in New York. He completed residency training in psychiatry at the New York Hospital‐Cornell Payne Whitney Clinic and fellowships in psychopharmacology, at the Harvard Medical School Clinical Research Training Program, and in Medical Informatics, at the HMS Center for Clinical Computing.

Professor-in-Residence, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Director, Treatment Unit, Department of Veteran Affairs VISN 22 Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC)

Dr. Green obtained his B.A. in psychobiology at Oberlin College, his doctorate in neuropsychology at Cornell University, and his postdoctoral training in neuropsychology at UCLA. He is on the editorial boards of Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, Schizophrenia Bulletin and Schizophrenia Research, and has authored over 180 journal articles. He has received numerous grants from NIMH, the Veterans Administration, and private foundations. His research activities have been devoted to understanding the nature and implications of cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia, including cognitive indicators of genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia and neural mechanisms of cognitive dysfunction. His laboratory (greenlab.npih.ucla.edu) has explored the relationship between cognitive deficits in schizophrenia and activities of daily living. Ongoing studies are evaluating cognitive retraining and novel pharmacological interventions to improve cognitive impairment in schizophrenia. He has written two books: Schizophrenia from a Neurocognitive Perspective: Probing the Impenetrable Darkness, published in 1998, and Schizophrenia Revealed: From Neurons to Social Interactions, published in 2001. Dr. Green was the Co-PI of the MATRICS Initiative from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and PI of the MATRICS-Psychometric and Standardization Study. He is a Fellow in the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, and past-president of the Society for Research in Psychopathology.

Titus H. Harris Chair, Harry K. Davis Professor, and Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston

Dr. Hirschfeld is known internationally for his research on the diagnosis and treatment of depression, bipolar disorder, and anxiety disorders. He has made major contributions to our understanding of the classification of depression and bipolar disorders, their clinical course, relationship to personality and personality disorders, and treatment with medication and psychotherapy.

One of the nation's leading advocates for the mentally ill, Dr. Hirschfeld spent six years as Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the National Depressive and Manic-Depressive Association. During that time, he played a key role in transforming the organization into America's most powerful voice for people suffering from depression.

Dr. Hirschfeld has authored over 200 scientific papers and abstracts in leading scientific and medical journals, and has contributed chapters on mood and anxiety disorders in four major psychiatric textbooks, as well as in nearly two dozen other books on psychiatry. He served as Chair of both the original and the revision of the American Psychiatric Association's Workgroup to Develop Practice Guidelines for Treatment of Patients with Bipolar Disorders.

A native of Detroit, Dr. Hirschfeld received his Bachelor of Science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1964, and his medical degree from the University of Michigan in 1968. He received a M.S. in Operations Research from Stanford University in 1972 and completed his residency in Psychiatry at Stanford University Medical Center in the same year. He was certified in Psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in 1975.

He subsequently spent 18 years at the National Institute of Mental Health, where he was Chief of the Mood, Anxiety and Personality Disorders Research Branch, and was the Clinical Director of NIMH's Depression/Awareness, Recognition, and Treatment (D/ART) Program.

Dr. Hirschfeld is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Texas Society of Psychiatric Physicians Psychiatric Excellence Award, the Nola Maddox Falcone Prize from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, the Gerald L. Klerman Lifetime Research Award from the National Depressive and Manic Depressive Association, the Jan Fawcett Humanitarian Award from the National Depressive and Manic Depressive Association, the Gerald L. Klerman Award for Panic Disorder from the World Psychiatric Association, and the Administrator's Award for Meritorious Achievement, the Distinguished Achievement Award from the University of Michigan, as well as the Outstanding Service Medal from the Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration. He is listed among The Best Doctors in America, and America’s Top Doctors.
 
Dr. Hirschfeld serves on the Board of Directors of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America and of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, of which he has served as President.  He also is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance and of the Scientific Advisory Council of the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression.

Vice President, Medical and Scientific Services, and Global Therapeutic Team Leader CNS, Quintiles Inc.

Dr. Kalali is currently focusing on developing novel compounds for the treatment of disorders of the central nervous system. He is globally responsible for development programs in psychiatry and neurology. He is also Professor of Psychiatry at University of California San Diego

Dr. Kalali is a member of the Executive Committee, and Chair of the Publication Committee of the International Society for CNS Clinical Trials and Methodology (ISCTM), as well as a member of the Scientific Committee. He was the Founding Chairman of the Executive Committee of the International Society for CNS Drug Development (ISCDD), and currently the Executive Secretary. In these roles he is active in facilitating scientific collaboration between academia, government, and pharmaceutical industry scientists.

Dr. Kalali has been an academic investigator in over 70 psychopharmacological clinical trials and at Quintiles has had medical and scientific responsibility for over 300 clinical trials.

He is an expert in CNS clinical trial methodology, including clinical rating scales, and has trained investigators from over forty countries.

Dr. Kalali is the Editor of the journal Psychiatry, and is on the editorial board of several other journals. He has published widely in journals such as the Archives of General Psychiatry, The American Journal of Psychiatry, and the British Journal of Psychiatry.

Dr. Kalali regularly presents at national and international scientific meetings, and lectures frequently on psychopharmacological and drug development topics. He is particularly interested in educating clinicians worldwide, and is facilitating this currently by being the Chairman of the Educational Committee of the Collegium Internationale Neuro-Psychopharmacologicum (CINP).

Dr. Kalali is an active member of many professional societies including the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, the American Society for Clinical Psychopharmacology, the American Psychiatric Association, the Canadian College of NeuroPsychopharmacology, the Collegium Internationale Neuro Psychopharmacologicum, the Drug Information Association, the International Society for CNS Drug Development, the International Society for CNS Clinical Trials and Methodology, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, United Kingdom, and the Society for Neuroscience.

Professor, Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Psychology, Duke University Medical Center
President of Neurocog Trials, Inc.
President Elect, ISCTM

Dr. Keefe's research is primarily devoted to understanding cognitive dysfunction in patients with schizophrenia and related disorders, including those at high risk for schizophrenia. He has a specific interest in the treatment of cognitive deficits in schizophrenia and designing methods to assess cognitive change.

Dr. Keefe has led the development of the battery of tests for several multi-site studies of cognitive dysfunction treatment-response, including the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Clinical Antipsychotic Trials of Intervention Effectiveness (CATIE) and the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia (BACS), a battery of tests that can be used in clinical trials or clinical settings to assess cognitive deficit treatment response. He is a member of the Measurement and Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia (MATRICS) Neurocognition Committee and Director of the Chief Neuropsychologists for the NIMH Treatment Units for Research on Neurocognition and Schizophrenia (TURNS) project, which aims to find new medications for improving cognition in patients with schizophrenia.

In addition to more than 120 scientific papers on schizophrenia, Dr. Keefe has authored Understanding Schizophrenia (1994) and On the Sweet Spot: Stalking the Effortless Present (2003). He has also edited two books, The Assessment of Negative Symptom and Cognitive Deficit Treatment Response (2000) and Improving Cognitive Function in Schizophrenia, 2nd ed. (2004). He serves on the Editorial Boards of Schizophrenia Research, Schizophrenia Bulletin, and Psychiatry. He is on the Scientific Board of NARSAD.

Dr. Keefe received his BA from Princeton University and his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from New York University.

Research Director, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

Dr. Koslow currently serves as the Research Director for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention; he also provides consultant science advisory services on personalized medicine to Brain Resource Limited and other neurotechnology businesses, and is the US Director for the BRAINnet foundation.  He previously had been at the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH), National Institutes of Health (NIH).  

Since 1970, Dr. Koslow served in the NIMH intramural program. Dr. Koslow's major efforts and accomplishments at NIMH are in the areas of Biological Psychiatry, Neuroscience and Neuroinformatics. In 1975 he was recruited to the extramural program at NIMH to support and stimulate research in Biological Psychiatry and Neuroscience. Additionally he was the Project Director and a Principal Investigator on The Collaborative Program on the Psychobiology of Depression-Biological Studies, a six center experimental clinical research programs testing the extant hypothesis on the biological basis of depression and the mechanism of antidepressant action. In 1982 he was appointed as the first Director of the Neuroscience Research Branch. Under his direction the neuroscience branch successfully grew into a Division of which he became the first Director. He was responsible for initiating new research programs in a number of nascent areas. These included Human Brain Imaging using non-invasive methods and the application of the theories and formulations of Chaos and non-linear dynamics to the understanding of complex brain processes and molecular biological studies of mental disorders.

During the Decade of the Brain, Dr. Koslow helped establish and served on the initial organizing committee for the National Library of Congress: Lecture Series on the Decade of the Brain.  Dr. Koslow created the NIMH report to Congress on Research Opportunities for Neuroscience in this Decade and into the next Millennium. This report clearly articulated the research opportunities and the challenge ahead specifically identifying fifty important questions to answer during this decade.

In 1993, Dr. Koslow initiated the multi-Agency Human Brain Project (HBP), and served as the chair of the Federal Interagency Coordinating Committee on the HBP (FICC-HBP). The HBP was created to establish an enabling electronic communication computer based distributed database, knowledge management system for the Neuroscience community to share experimental data. In 1995 Dr. Koslow extended the HBP globally using the term Neuroinformatics.  He established and Co-Chaired a Neuroinformatics committee within the United States/ European Commission Biotechnology Working Group. He also worked with the White House Office on Science and Technology Policy through which he establishedg and chaired the Neuroinformatics subgroup of the Biological Working Group of the Megascience Forum of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), as well as the chair of the Neuroinformatics Working Group of the Global Science Forum of the OECD. It was through the OECD committees that Dr. Koslow developed a framework, business and operational plan for the newly established International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility which has been established in Stockholm, Sweden at the Karolinska Institute.

In 1999 Dr. Koslow was appointed as the inaugural Director of the Office on Neuroinformatics, and an Associate Director of the National Institutes of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, in the USA.  He also continued to serve as the coordinator for the Multi Agency Human Brain Project.

In 2005, he was recruited to the Allen Institute for Brain Science, Seattle Washington, as the Director of External Relations. In 2006, Dr. Koslow initiated his career as a private neuroscience and biomedical consultant to biotechnology and investment companies. In 2009, Dr. Koslow joined the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention as the Research Director.

Dr. Koslow has served on a number of important National and International Panels and Committees including: the President's Commission on Mental Health: Research Task Panel (1978); Public Health Service AIDS Prevention Neuroscience and Behavioral Workgroup (1988-90); and, PHS Indo-US Cooperation in Science and Technology serving as the US Chair of the Working Group on Mental Health, Substance Abuse and Neuro-Sciences (1991). Dr. Koslow is an active member in a number of scientific societies and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Life Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. Dr. Koslow has received numerous awards in recognition of his accomplishments. In 2006 his edited book, Databasing the Brain, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., received the Award for Excellence in Publishing, Association of American Publisher’s Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division: Best New Book published in 2005 in Computer and Information Science. He serves on the editorial board of numerous Neuroscience journals, and consults to a number of private organizations, businesses and foreign governments. Dr. Koslow has 72 publications in referred journals, 20 invited chapters in books and edited 13 books. His most recent book is in Press from Oxford University Press and is due out in the fall of 2010, Personalized Medicine, Healthcare and Integrative Neuroscience.

He received his BS from Columbia University in New York City and his PhD from the University of Chicago, in the Biological Sciences, Department of Pharmacology, specializing in Neuropsychopharmacology. 

Division Director, Division of Psychiatry Products, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, FDA

Dr. Laughren is currently Division Director for the Division of Psychiatry Products, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at FDA. Prior to coming to FDA in September 1983, Dr. Laughren was affiliated with the VA Medical Center in Providence, RI, and was on the faculty of the Brown University Program in Medicine. He received his medical degree from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin, and he also completed residency training in psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Laughren is board certified in general psychiatry.

As Division Director for the Division of Psychiatry Products, Dr. Laughren oversees the review of all psychiatric drug development activities conducted under INDs and the review of all NDAs and supplements for new psychiatric drug claims. He has authored and co-authored many papers on regulatory and methodological issues pertaining to the development of psychiatric drugs, and is a frequent speaker at professional meetings on these same topics. Dr. Laughren has received numerous awards from FDA for his regulatory accomplishments.
 

Director of the Department of Veterans Affairs VISN 22 Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center, Director of the Section on Psychosis of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, Professor of Psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

Dr. Marder's research has focused on improving the long-term treatment of individuals with schizophrenia through pharmacological and psychosocial strategies. He was the Principal Investigator for the NIMH MATRICS initiative to improve neurocognition in schizophrenia as well as the leader of a trials network to study candidate drugs for enhancing cognition.

Dr. Marder has received the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, the Stanley Dean Research Award of the American College of Psychiatry, the Alexander Gralnick Award for Schizophrenia Research from the American Psychiatric Association, and the APIRE/Kempf Fund Award for Research Development in Psychobiological Psychiatry. He is listed in The Best Doctors in America and America's Top Doctors.

Deputy Director, Division of Psychiatry Products, Office of Drug Evaluation 1, Office of New Drugs, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research

Dr. Mathis is trained in psychiatry and family practice, and is a commissioned officer in the US Public Health Service.  He has been with the agency for eight years.  Prior to the FDA, he was an attending physician at St. Elizabeth's Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program in Washington DC.  He also a psychiatrist in private practice in Columbia, Maryland.

President Emeritus, National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI)

Dr. McNulty is President Emeritus of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) National Board of Directors. He currently serves as the director of NAMI’s STAR Center, a National Technical Assistance Center founded by SAMHSA’s Center for Mental Health Services. Previously, he served as Director of Consumer and Recovery Services for Public Sector Solutions at Magellan Health Services, the nation’s leading national managed behavioral health organization. Dr. McNulty currently also serves as President of the Manic Depressive and Depressive Association of Rhode Island, a position he was first elected to in 1989. He is also presently serving as Vice Chair of the NAMI National Consumer Council Executive Committee. He has recently stepped down from the boards of directors of the National Association of State Mental Health Planning and Advisory Councils and the National Association of Consumer/Survivor Mental Health Administrators.

He is a graduate of Brown University in Providence, with a degree in International Relations. He spent much of his early life in Latin America and Europe, becoming fluent in several languages.

Professor of Psychology, Harvard Medical School
Co-Director, Bipolar Clinic and Research Program, Massachusetts General Hospital
Associate Director of the Depression Clinical and Research Program, Massachusetts General Hospital

Dr. Nierenberg  attended the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University followed by a residency in psychiatry at New York University/Bellevue Hospital, where he became a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at Yale University. Dr. Nierenberg ran one of the Affective Disorders Inpatient Units and the Affective Disorders Outpatient Unit at McLean Hospital in Belmont, MA. In 1992, he joined the Psychiatry Department at MGH.

He has published over 300 papers and 30 chapters and reviews, and has been listed among the Best Doctors in North America for the treatment of mood and anxiety disorders since 1994. He received the NDMDA Gerald L. Klerman Young Investigator Award and was elected a member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) and as a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.

Dr. Nierenberg is the Director of the NIMH Bipolar Trials Network which is conducting LiTMUS, an effectiveness trial of low dose lithium alone or in combination with optimized treatment. His primary interests are treatment resistant depression, bipolar depression, and the longitudinal course of mood disorders. Dr. Nierenberg lectures nationally and internationally, teaches and supervises clinicians and researchers, maintains an active clinical practice, conducts clinical trials, and is Editor in Chief of CNS Spectrums as well as on the editorial boards of multiple psychiatric journals.

Senior Lecturer, Division of Psychological Medicine and Psychiatry, King's College London, University of London

Dr. Reichenberg's research focuses on understanding the causes of two disorders: schizophrenia and autism. His research approach involves the combination of epidemiological investigations of risk factors of these disorders, with more specific clinical neuropsychological assessments of patients and their family members in an attempt to identify potential markers of disease liability which are then applied to genetic studies.

Associate Professor in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Co-Director, MGH Bipolar Clinic and Research Program

Dr. Sachs earned his medical degree at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He interned in family practice and psychiatry at the University of Maryland Hospital in Baltimore and was a resident in psychiatry and Chief Resident in Acute Psychiatry Service at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Dr. Sachs served as the Principal Investigator of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIHM) Systematic Treatment Enhancement Program for Bipolar Disorder (STEP-BD), the largest treatment study ever conducted for bipolar disorder. He is principal investigator for the Cohen Family Foundation study, Inflammatory Markers in Bipolar Disorder, and the Erdman Fund study, Interventions for Ineffective Complex Chronic Care.

Dr. Sachs chairs the Scientific Advisory Board for the National Alliance on Mentally Illness and serves on the scientific advisory board of the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance.  He is Co-editor-in-chief of Clinical Approaches to Bipolar Disorder and the editorial boards of Current Psychiatry, Medscape and Psychotic Disorders Review, among numerous others. He has authored over 200 articles, abstracts, books, reviews, and book chapters. Dr. Sachs has received many awards, among them a Thouron Scholarship, a Dunlop Award for psychiatric research and writing, and a Dupont-Warren Fellowship at the Harvard Medical School. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a member of numerous professional societies, including the American Medical Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Professor, State University of New York

Nina R. Schooler, Ph.D. is Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at SUNY Downstate Medical Center as well Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at the Georgetown University School of Medicine, She also conducts research at the Veterans Affairs VISN 5 Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Center, and The Zucker Hillside Hospital. She received her graduate training from Columbia University. Her current areas of research include long-term course of schizophrenia and its treatment, first episode schizophrenia and clinical trial design and management and clinical assessment.

Dr. Schooler is a fellow with the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, fellow of the Collegium Internationale Neuropsychopharmacologicum, fellow of the American Psychological Association, and fellow of the American Psychological Society. She has served as President of the American Psychopathological Association and the Association for Clinical Psychosocial Research. She is a recipient of the Gralnick Foundation High Point Hospital Award, the Alexander Gralnick Research Investigator Award and the Samuel Hamilton Award.

Chief of Clinical Trials Operations and Biostatistics Unit, Division of Services and Intervention Research, National Institute of Mental Health

Joanne Severe holds a Master of Science degree in Biostatistics and Epidemiology from Georgetown University.  She has worked with NIMH-funded multi-site clinical trials in mental health for over 30 years. Her extensive expertise in this area comes from directing NIMH in-house data centers and managing all operational aspects of the start-up, implementation, monitoring, data collection, management, processing, statistical analysis, and creation of public access dataset from such trials.  For the last 15 years, she has directed an NIMH operations group which oversees large, complex multi-site effectiveness trials across many mental health disorders in pediatric, adolescent, adult and geriatric samples.  She provides guidance to the academic data centers which manage these trials, and promotes quality assurance by developing standardized monitoring of and reporting from the trials. She participates in Data and Safety Monitoring Boards, and numerous NIH committees, groups and projects concerned with quality assurance, efficiency and cost-effectiveness issues in federally funded clinical trials.

Professor of Psychiatry and Director, Division of Schizophrenia Research, UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and UMDNJ-University Behavioral HealthCare

Dr. Silverstein is the former Chair of the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on Serious Mental Illness, a member of the executive committee for the NIMH  Cognitive Neuroscience Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia (CNTRICS) project, and a member of the NIMH study section Adult Psychopathology and Disorders of Aging (ADPA).  Dr. Silverstein received his Ph.D. in Psychology from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1989, and completed his internship and fellowship at Cornell Medical College from 1988-1990.  He was on the faculty of the University of the Rochester Medical Center, the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) prior to joining UMDNJ.  Dr. Silverstein’s research interests are in cognitive and perceptual impairments in schizophrenia,  rehabilitation of those deficits, and psychometric and methodological issues related to their assessment.  He has over 120 publications related to schizophrenia, is currently Principal Investigator (PI) on two NIMH grants, and site PI on a third.  He has also received funding from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, the Stanley Medical Research Institute, the Jacob and Valeria Langaloth Foundation, the Scottish Rite Schizophrenia Research Program, the Committee to Aid Research to End Schizophrenia, Pfizer, Janssen Pharmaceutica, and AstraZeneca. Dr. Silverstein was the 2008 recipient of the United States Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association’s Armin Loeb Award for research in psychiatric rehabilitation, and the 2009 recipient of the New Jersey Psychological Association’s Distinguished Researcher Award.

Director, Pfizer, Inc.

Michelle received her Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Arizona and a M.A. in clinical psychology from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Michelle joined Pfizer’s Outcomes Research group in 2002 and has extensive experience supporting development programs in a variety of therapeutic areas. She is currently the Outcomes Research therapeutic area lead for Neurosciences within Pfizer’s Specialty Care Business Unit working on indications including schizophrenia and cognitive impairment associated with schizophrenia, and also supports marketed products in the inflammation and multiple sclerosis therapeutic areas. She is a member of Pfizer’s internal Suicidality Assessment Working Group and is on the MATRICS-CT industry-academic partnership subcommittee that is validating an intermediate functional measure for cognition in schizophrenia. Prior to joining Pfizer, Michelle conducted research as part of a federally funded grant at the University of Arizona to study psychosocial interventions for persons with serious mental illness in the Arizona public mental health system.

Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Co-Chief, Division of Schizophrenia and Related Disorders, University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio

Dr. Velligan received her training in clinical psychology at the University of California and Mental Health Clinical Research Center for Schizophrenia in Los Angeles.  In 1989, Dr. Velligan moved to Texas to assist in the development of a psychosis treatment and research unit.  Dr. Velligan’s internationally recognized research program focuses on the cognitive deficits associated with schizophrenia, the functional consequences of these deficits, and interventions to decrease cognitive impairment and improve community function in individuals with this illness.  An additional research focus is on adherence to antipsychotic medications for individuals living in the community.   Dr. Velligan is author of numerous publications and has received grant funding from the National Institute of Health, The National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, industry and private foundations.  Dr. Velligan frequently serves as a consultant to pharmaceutical companies and scientific investigators in the areas of medication adherence, symptom assessment, cognition and outcomes, and is a scientific board member of the Foundation for the National Institute of Health.