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Jordan W. Smoller, MD, ScD

Dr. Jordan Smoller is a psychiatrist, epidemiologist, and geneticist whose research focus has been understanding the genetic and environmental determinants of psychiatric disorders across the lifespan and using big data to advance precision mental health including improved methods to reduce risk and enhance resilience.

Dr. Smoller earned his undergraduate degree summa cum laude at Harvard University and his medical degree at Harvard Medical School.  After completing residency training in psychiatry at McLean Hospital, he received masters and doctoral degrees in epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Dr. Smoller is the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Trustees Endowed Chair in Psychiatric Neuroscience, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. He is Associate Chief for Research in the MGH Department of Psychiatry, Director of the Center for Precision Psychiatry, and Director of the Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Genetics Unit in the MGH Center for Genomic Medicine. Dr. Smoller is a Tepper Family MGH Research Scholar and also serves as Director of the Omics Unit of the MGH Division of Clinical Research and co-Director of the Mass General Brigham Biobank at MGH. He is Director of the Mass General Brigham Training Program in Precision and Genomic Medicine, an Associate Member of the Broad Institute, co-Chair of the Cross-Disorder Workgroup of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, and President of the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics.  He is Principal Investigator of the New England Precision Medicine Consortium as part of the NIH All of Us Research Program and co-Chair of the All of Us Science Committee. Dr. Smoller is an author of more than 400 scientific publications and is also the author of The Other Side of Normal (HarperCollins/William Morrow, 2012).

Jehannine Austin, Ph.D.

Dr. Jehannine Austin is Executive Director of the BC Mental Health and Substance Use Services Research Institute, and is a Professor in Psychiatry & Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia, where they hold the Canada Research Chair in Translational Psychiatric Genomics. They are a board certified genetic counselor and their research work involves studying the impact of genetic counseling for people with psychiatric disorders and their families. They founded the world's first specialist psychiatric genetic counseling service that has won an award for its impact on patient outcomes, and in addition to peer-reviewed publications, has written a book, and won awards for teaching, leadership, and research. They are a member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada, and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

James Potash, MD, MPH

Dr. Potash has been the Henry Phipps Professor, Director of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and Psychiatrist-in-Chief, at Johns Hopkins since 2017. Before that he was Chair and Department Executive Officer of the University of Iowa Department of Psychiatry for six years. Dr. Potash graduated from Yale College. Following graduation, he served in the Peace Corps in the West African country of Senegal. He completed his master’s degree in public health at Johns Hopkins, and then went on to medical school at Hopkins, medical internship at Hopkins Bayview, and a year working as a general practitioner in another West African country, Benin. He returned to do his psychiatry residency at Hopkins. He became the Mood Disorders Center research director before moving to Iowa. Dr. Potash’s work has focused on investigation of the genetic and epigenetic basis of depression and bipolar disorder. These efforts have resulted in over 215 publications and 20 years of consistent NIH funding. Dr. Potash serves as Treasurer for the International Society for Psychiatric Genetics and has been a member of the Council on Research of the American Psychiatric Association. In addition to his research endeavors, Dr. Potash is also an active clinician who sees patients with depression and bipolar disorder. He does this in the inpatient and outpatient setting, and also in the mood disorders consultation clinic.

Naomi Wray, Ph.D

I am Professor at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. I am an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council Leadership Fellow (i.e. the government pays my salary through a competitive award), a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health & Medical Sciences. My first career in livestock genetics (where the theory and power of polygenicity is demonstrable) has shaped my understanding of polygenicity of common disease. Now my research group focuses on development and application on new statistical methods to genetic and genomic data. I play an active role in the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium and have led some key papers. I am an international editorial advisor for JAMA Psychiatry and I am on the editorial board of Neuron.

I was elected to the board of ISPG in 2017 and in that capacity helped establish the Diversity plenary session at our annual conference and also the ISPG IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Access) committee. I was elected as secretary of ISPG in 2020.

 

 

Sarah Bergen, Ph.D.

Dr. Bergen is an Associate Professor and Principal Researcher at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden.  Her research bridges psychiatry, genetics, epidemiology and neuroscience in the pursuit of understanding the determinants of serious mental disorders. She has a longstanding research focus on schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and more recently conducts investigations into depression and eating disorders.

Through investigations of common and rare genetic variation as well as environmental influences, her research aims to better understand the routes to developing psychiatric disorders, their relationships with commonly comorbid conditions, and the observed variability within patient groups.

In addition to serving on the Board of Directors for the International Society for Psychiatric Genetics, Dr. Bergen is on the management committees for the Genomic Aggregation Project in Sweden (GAPS), and the EU COST actions Maximizing Impact of Research in Neurodevelopmental Disorders (MINDDS) and Enhancing Psychiatric Genetic Counselling, Testing, and Training in Europe (EnGagE).

Lea K. Davis, Ph.D.

Lea Davis is an Assistant Professor of Genetic Medicine, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and Biomedical Informatics. Dr. Davis’ work employs a population level approach to the investigation of the genetic basis of a wide range of complex phenotypes. Her research aims to discover how polygenic risk, rare variant risk, and environment interact to result in common complex diseases. To accomplish this goal, she applies genomic and bioinformatic approaches to biobank data and phenotypes extracted from the electronic health record. In addition to her work on complex trait genomics, Dr. Davis has long-standing interests in social justice, research ethics, genomic privacy, and data sharing.

Barbara Franke, Prof. Dr.

Barbara Franke holds the Chair of Molecular Psychiatry at Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands. Based at the Human Genetics and Psychiatry departments of the Radboud University Medical Center (Radboudumc), she heads the Division of Genome Research. She is also a Principal Investigator at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour. She is an elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities, and of Academia Europaea. She also has been awarded honorary professorships at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, and Aarhus University in Denmark.

Barbara is the co-lead of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium's ADHD Working Group and the ENIGMA brain imaging consortium's ADHD Working Group. She founded and coordinates the International Multicentre persistent ADHD Collaboration (IMpACT) and the ECNP Network ‘ADHD across the Lifespan’. She contributes/has contributed to many EU collaborative consortium grants and so far has coordinated three of those herself.

As a molecular biologist and geneticist, her research is focused on understanding the genetic contribution to neurodevelopmental psychiatric disorders, especially ADHD and its comorbidities. Beyond gene-finding, she uses complementary approaches (bioinformatics, cell-based and small animal models, neuroimaging genetics) to map biological pathways from gene to disease. It is her goal to make genetic information useful for improving the diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment of psychiatric disorders.​

Hailiang Huang, Ph.D.

Dr. Huang is Assistant in Genetics in the Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital and Director of the Stanley Center Asia Initiatives at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He is also a faculty member in the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Huang's research focuses on the genetics of complex disorders, especially autoimmune and psychiatric disorders. He is interested in developing new statistical and analytical methods, and use them to pinpoint and understand the genetic factors driving human complex disorders. His studies usually use large-scale omics data from various consortia and public available sources such as UK Biobank, NIH Roadmap, and GTEx.

Dr. Huang developed GWiS, a gene-based association test that has been used in many consortia to find genes associated with human complex disorders (Huang et al., PLoS Genetics, 2011). He is a member of the International Inflammatory Bowel Diseases Genetics Consortium (IIBDGC) and has co-led its recent fine-mapping effort to resolve known genetic associations to variants with high causal probabilities (Huang et al., Nature, 2017). He is also leading a workgroup in the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) to build a large-scale Asian schizophrenia cohort and use this cohort to understand the genetic architecture of schizophrenia in the Asian populations. Dr Huang's other research interests include developing methods for testing rare variants with population stratification, investigating the connection between tissue-specific gene regulation and non-coding genetic associations, and understanding the genetic mechanisms underlying the spontaneous clearance of the hepatitis C virus.

Dr. Huang received cross-disciplinary training combining engineering, genetics and medicine. He earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, supervised by Dr. Joel Bader. He completed his postdoctoral training with Dr. Mark Daly at MGH and the Broad Institute.

Andrew McIntosh, M.D.

Andrew McIntosh is a psychiatrist and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Edinburgh. He co-chairs the Major Depressive Disorder Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) with Cathryn Lewis and leads the Generation Scotland Expert Working Group for Psychiatric Disorders. He seeks to identify the causes and consequences of depression using genomic approaches and by linking to large and routinely collected health datasets.

Sarah Medland, Ph.D.

Professor Sarah Medland is a Psychiatric and Statistical Geneticist working on Neuroimaging genetics and Mental health and is best known for her work with the ENIGMA consortium and the International Workshops on Methodology of Twin and Family Studies (held in Boulder, CO). Her work bridges Genetics, Psychology, Neuro-Imaging and applied Statistics with a focus on understanding the genetic and environmental contributions to human behaviour and disease. She serves as Secretary of the Behavior Genetics Association and currently serves on the board of directors for the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics.

 

Daniel Mueller, M.D., Ph.D.

A psychiatrist, clinician scientist and implementor of pharmacogenetics in Psychiatry, Dr. Daniel Mueller joined the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health at the University of Toronto in 2008. As Professor, he is affiliated with the Departments of Psychiatry and Pharmacology & Toxicology as well as with the Institute of Medical Science. For further information on his research actvities and to meet the team, please see: https://PGxRC.cahttps://PGxRC.ca

Dr. Mueller has made numerous and significant contributions in the field of psychiatric pharmacogenetics and implementation in clinical practice with more than 200 articles published. He is the recipient of prestigious recognitions awarded by NARSAD/BBRF (USA), CCNP (Canada) and DGPPN (Germany). Within the ISPG, he is leading the Pharmacogenetics Group of the Genetic Testing Committee (see also: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33147643)

He received his MD at the University of Bonn and has completed his residency training at the Charité University Medicine Clinic in Berlin where he also completed his Habilitation in pharmacogenetics of antipsychotics. Dr. Mueller is member of the Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium (https://cpicpgx.org/) where he contributed to pharmacogenetic recommendation guidelines for antidepressants, opioids, atomoxetine, and carbamazepine. To support implementation and educational workshops, Dr. Mueller founded the Psychiatric Pharmacogenetic Interest Group hosted by the Pharmacogenetics Research Network (https://www.pgrn.org/).

Benjamin Neale, Ph.D.         

Benjamin Neale is an associate professor in the Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit (ATGU) at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), where he directs the Genomics of Public Health Initiative. He is also an associate professor in medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS), and an institute member at the Broad Institute. Neale is strongly committed to gaining insights into the genetics of common, complex human diseases. Neale and Mark Daly, both of whom are associated with the Broad Institute and MGH, lead the ADHD Initiative, a collaborative effort that focuses on genomic studies of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Neale’s research and training have focused heavily on statistical methodology. He has analyzed genetic data from large-scale studies of patients with ADHD, autism, age-related macular degeneration, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic disorders. Neale also analyzed data from the first ADHD genome-wide association study (GWAS) meta-analysis, which combined the results of four studies to boost statistical power. Neale contributed to the development of software tools such as PLINK, one of the most frequently used packages for GWAS analysis. In addition to his roles at both the Broad Institute and MGH, Neale is the head of the ADHD psychiatric genetics GWAS analysis committee and an active member of the broader Psychiatric GWAS Consortium analysis committee, which is charged with analyzing all psychiatric data from these large-scale genome-wide association studies. Neale also led the design of the exome chip, a genotyping array that captures rare coding variation in a cost-effective manner. To date, over 1.5 million exome chips have been sold.

Neale studied at the University of Chicago and Virginia Commonwealth University, earning a B.Sc. in genetics. He went on to earn his Ph.D. in human genetics from King’s College in London, UK. Neale completed his postdoctoral training in Daly’s laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital. In addition to many local research collaborations, he also serves as advisor and analyst to international genetic research consortia on psychiatric diseases.

Professor Dr. Danielle Posthuma 
Prof. Dr. Danielle Posthuma is a statistical geneticist at the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam and Amsterdam University Medical Center, Neuroscience Campus Amsterdam. She completed three MSc’s in clinical and biological psychology and medical anthropology, and graduated cum laude for her PhD in 2002 at the VU University Amsterdam. She became a member of the Young Academy of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences in 2005 and was elected for lifelong membership in 2019. She received numerous prizes including the Scott Fuller Memorial Award from the International Behavior Genetics Association (2005), for early career outstanding scientific achievements, the Richard Todd award for outstanding contributions to child psychiatry, from the International Society for Psychiatric Genetics (2017), and the Lodewijk Sandkuijl award for contributions to statistical genetics from the Dutch Society of Human Genetics (2019). In 2008, 2009 and 2010 she was elected as one of the 400 most successful women under the age of 38 in the Netherlands. In 2014 she received a 1.5M€ personal ‘VICI’ grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research for her research into the genetic causes of psychiatric disorders. In 2019 she was awarded a 2.5M€ ERC Advanced grant from the European Research Council. She is a co-founder of the iPScenter Netherlands, which aims to detect biological mechanisms of brain diseases using pluripotent cells. She is also the director of the Genetic Cluster Computer hosted by SurfSARA since 2007, which serves as a central storage and data center of a large number of national and international genetic studies. She leads the Dutch BRAINSCAPES consortium which aims to bridge genetics and neuroscience and which was awarded 19.6€ Euro in 2019 by the Dutch government.  As head of the Department of Complex Trait Genetics at the VU University Amsterdam and Amsterdam University Medical Centre she leads a group of 30 researchers from diverse fields, including statistics, stem cell biology, and bioinformatics. Her work focuses on developing novel methods that aid in detecting genes for brain diseases, interpreting these findings in biological context and generating mechanistic hypotheses that can be tested in functional experiments. She has recently led several large scale genome-wide association studies for Alzheimer’s Disease, intelligence, insomnia and neuroticism, and is the lead author on innovative tools such as MAGMA (for gene-set analyses) and FUMA (for postGWAS annotation). She has authored > 250 papers in scientific journals including Science, Nature, Nature Neuroscience and Nature Genetics.

Henriette Raventós, M.D.

Dr. Raventós is a medical doctor with a masters degree in Biochemistry. She then did a fellowship under the supervision of Mary Claire King and Pedro León to map the first non-syndromic gene for deafness, DFNA1, in a large Costa Rican kindred. For the past 25 years, she has been the local PI for large scale genetic studies in Hispanic populations on schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and Alzheimer disease. Her group has implemented different diagnostic procedures on these participants including standardized instruments, neurocognitive batteries and structural neuroimaging studies. Whole genome scans and WGS have identified genetic variants associated to some of these disorders, which are being further charactered at a functional level. She is a lecturer at the University of Costa Rica in genetics, mental health and bioethics; Vice President of the Costa Rican Academy of Sciences; and part of several national and international advocacy and expert consultant groups on mental health, disability and gender equality.