2026 Early Career Investigator Program Award Recipients

Elham Assary | Broad Internalising Genetic Factor Improves Variant Discovery and Polygenic Prediction of Childhood Emotional Problems

Nathaniel Bell | Multi-Omics Validation in iPSC-Derived Astrocytes Identifies SCZ Therapeutics Targeting Genetically Implicated Pathways

Güneş Can | Shared Genetic Liability between Cannabis Use Disorder and Alzheimer's disease: Convergent Evidence from Cross-Trait pleiotropy, Mendelian randomization, and Endothelial Cell-Type Enrichment

Vivien Chebii | Genome-Wide Association Study of Depression in a Black South African Cohort

Jean Gonzalez | Prescription Opioid Genetics Study (POGS): Initial Response to Opioids Predicts Opioid Use Disorder

Keira Johnston | Identification of Novel Genomic Risk Loci in Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder via Transcriptomic Imputation in a Multi-Ancestral Adolescent Population

Alfred Kibowen | Assessing the Impact of Genetic Variation on THC and CBD Exposure in Human Neurons

Anna Monistrol-Mula | Shared Genetic Architecture of Anxiety and Immune-Mediated Conditions: From Latent Factors to Functional Pathways

Alba Navarro-Flores | Effects of Polygenic Scores for Substance Use Disorders on Cognitive Function Among Patients with Major Psychiatric Disorders

Blessing Oselu | TrANCES-PRS: A Web-Based Adaptive Benchmarking Framework for Polygenic Risk Scoring in African and Underrepresented Populations

Kayla Retallick-Townsley | Direct Crispr-Editing of rs4702 Deciphers Cell-Type Specific Epistatic Interactions with Schizophrenia Polygenic Risk

Matthew Rosenblatt | Mapping the Genetic Architecture of Human Cortical Expansion and Its Links to Psychiatric Disorders

Johanne Sørensen | Familial and Molecular Genetic Investigation of Etiological Continuity across Child-, Adolescent and Early Adult-Onset Depression

Kristien van der Walt | Leveraging Broader Representation from Continental Africa and Diaspora Populations to Enhance Schizophrenia Locus Discovery, Fine-Mapping, and Prediction

Liangying Yin | Leveraging Multi-Modality Data to Predict Gene Expression across Brain Regions and Blood in Stress- And Aging-Related Brain Disorders

Xinhe Zhang | Timing of Autism Diagnosis and Co-Occurring Mental Health Conditions: Evidence from Population- And Family-Based Cohorts

Guorui Zhao | Identifying genetic Contributions of 6q21 Loci and PPAR Pathway to Antipsychotic-Induced Metabolic Syndrome: A Sex-Stratified Multi-Omics Study

Yunqing Zhu | Lipid-Lowering and Glucose-Lowering Drug Targets Differentially Modulate Antipsychotic Treatment Efficacy in Schizophrenia

2026 Early Career Investigator Program Oral Finalists

Mona Abdi | Genomic Insights into Autism Spectrum Disorder in an Underrepresented Middle Eastern Population: A Whole-Genome Sequencing Study of Qatari Families

Susan Kuo | Community Functioning and Related Support Needs in Autistic Adults with and without Guardianship: Phenotypic, Genetic, and Social-Environmental Associations

Yeshwanth Mahesh | Integrative Multi-Omics and Deep Learning Analysis Identifies CTNND2 and NETO1 as Key Neurodevelopmental Disorder Risk Genes in a Pediatric Cohort of 68,975 Individuals

Kayla Retallick-Townsley | Direct Crispr-Editing of rs4702 Deciphers Cell-Type Specific Epistatic Interactions with Schizophrenia Polygenic Risk

Julia Sealock | Rare Coding Variation Identifies New Genetic Contributors to Schizophrenia

Apurba Shil | Pervasive Pleiotropy between Preterm Birth Neurodevelopmental, Psychiatric, and Cognitive Traits

Madhurbain Singh | Genetics of EHR-Derived Antidepressant Nonresponse across Countries and Ancestry Groups

Emilia Vartiainen | Schizophrenia Polygenic Score Predicts Treatment Trajectories Transdiagnostically Across Psychosis Spectrum Disorders

Rui Zhang | Contribution of Common and Rare Variants to Schizophrenia Risk in East and South Asian Ancestries

Lea Zillich | A Large-Scale Meta-Analysis of DNA Methylation Signatures of Alcohol Use Disorder in the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium Substance Use Disorder Epigenetics Working Group

2026 Early Career Investigator Program Poster Finalists

Helena Davies | Polygenic Risk Profiles of Anorexia Nervosa over Time

Yueming Gao | Psychiatric Polygenic Risk is Associated With Shared and Distinct Latent Thalamic Imaging Components

Rana Ghamari | Coding Variants and Neurodevelopmental Traits across the lifespan: Gene-Based and Single-Variant Evidence from Birth and Adult Cohorts

Philipp Grotehusmann | Cross‑Cohort Prediction of Borderline Personality Disorder Using a Multi‑PGS Modeling Framework

Cong Han | A Lifespan Brain eQTL Atlas of the East Asian Population Decodes Context-Specific Risk Windows of Schizophrenia

Ersoy Kocak | Development and Validation of Polygenic Risk Profiles of Schizophrenia

Julia Kraft | Investigating the Shared Genetic Basis of Treatment Resistance across schizophrenia, Major depression, and Bipolar Disorder

Aisling Mellon-Whelan | Immune-Brain Polygenic Risk Architecture and Clinical Heterogeneity in Psychiatric Disorders

Oliver Pain | GenoDisc: A Web-Accessible Platform for Post-Gwas Functional Interpretation and Drug-Prioritisation

Walker Rogers | Mapping the Genetic Landscape of Hallucinogen Use Phenotypes

Rachele Rubiu | TRex: An Integrated Pipeline for Genome-Wide Tandem Repeat Expansion Analysis Reveals Novel Genetic Risk Architecture in Psychosis

Lingyu Zhan | Uncovering the Structural Genome in Tourette Syndrome: From Indels to Large-Scale Variants