Massachusetts General Hospital | Psychiatry

Our Staff

---

Maurizio Fava, MD

Executive Director, CTNI; Vice Chair, Department of Psychiatry, MGH; Director, Depression Clinical and Research Program, MGH; Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Fava obtained his medical degree from the University of Padova School of Medicine, where he also completed a residency in endocrinology. After finishing residency training in psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital, he has been Director of the Depression Clinical and Research Program there since 1990. Under Dr. Fava’s direction, the Depression Clinical and Research Program has become one of the most highly regarded depression programs in the country, conducting research projects in a variety of areas, including pharmacotherapy of resistant depression, neuroimaging, genetics, neurophysiology, neuroendocrinology, novel pharmacotherapies, alternative medicine, and psychotherapy.  Dr. Fava is an international expert in psychiatric clinical trials’ methodology and has developed with Dr. David Schoenfeld the Sequential Parallel Comparison study design.

Dr. Fava has authored or co-authored more than 350 original articles published in medical journals with international circulation. He has also edited five books, and published more than 50 chapters and 500 abstracts. Dr. Fava is also a well-known national and international speaker, having given more than 200 presentations at national and international meetings. Dr. Fava is Editor-in-Chief of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Mind, Mood & Memory newsletter.

 

---

Marlene P. Freeman, M.D.

Associate Medical Director, CTNI; Director of Clinical Services, Perinatal and Reproductive Psychiatry Program, Massachusetts General Hospital; Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Freeman completed medical school at Northwestern University Medical School. She completed residency at the Harvard LongwoodPsychiatry Residency Program and a research fellowship in the Biological Psychiatry Program at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.

Her research and clinical expertise is in the areas of mood disorders and women’s mental health. She established and directed Women’s Mental Health Programs at the University of Arizona and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

As a researcher in perinatal psychiatry, she has specific experience working with vulnerable populations. She also has extensive experience in the area of safety, recruitment, and retention of women in clinical trials. She is Vice Editor-in-Chief for The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

She is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), and chaired the APA Task Force on Complementary and Alternative Medicine, subcommittee on Omega-3 Fatty Acids in Psychiatry, and was a member of the APA’s workgroup on Major Depressive Disorder treatment guidelines.

She is on the Board of Directors of the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology (ASCP) and Postpartum Progress, Inc, and is an Associate Member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP). She chairs the Membership Advisory Task Force and serves on the Women’s Task Force for ACNP.

 

---

Andrew A. Nierenberg, MD

Director of Education, CTNI; Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Director, Bipolar Research Program, and Associate Director of the Depression Clinical and Research Program, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).

He attended the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University followed by a residency in psychiatry at New York University/Bellevue Hospital and then became a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at Yale University. Dr. Nierenberg then 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 as 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 national Bipolar Trials Network (BTN) that focuses on comparative effectiveness studies. The BTN recently received a $10 million ARRA grant for the Bipolar CHOICE study (Clinical Health Outcomes Initiative in Comparative Effectiveness) that will examine 6 month outcomes of bipolar patients randomized to either lithium or quetiapine, a second generation antipsychotic mood stabilizer.

Dr. Nierenberg’s 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 and consulting practice, conducts clinical trials, consults to and collaborates with the pharmaceutical industry through the MGH Clinical Trials Network and Institute, and is on the editorial boards of multiple psychiatric journals.

 

---

David Schoenfeld, PhD

Director of Biostatistics, CTNI; Director, MGH Biostatistics Center; Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Professor, Harvard School of Public Health

 

Dr. Schoenfeld is a Biostatistician at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health. He has provided statistical support for investigators conducting clinical and laboratory research for more than 30 years. He is principal investigator for the Clinical Coordination Center for the ARDS Network, which represents over 30 hospitals and conducts multi-center clinical trials on Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. Dr. Schoenfeld is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and has numerous papers in the statistical literature.

Dr. Schoenfeld developed the first omnibus goodness of fit test for the proportional hazards regression model, a model that is used extensively in clinical trials that have survival or time to progression as an endpoint. He also developed widely used graphical techniques for this model. Dr. Schoenfeld’s current research involves the application of causal inference to clinical trials, methods for the analysis of studies involving gene arrays and novel clinical trial designs in psychiatry and neurology.

---

Martina Flynn
Director of Clinical Trial Operations, CTNI

Ms. Flynn's responsibilities include management of clinical research study timelines, budgets, deliverables and general study conduct, as well as developing and overseeing the overall research infrastructure. For the seven years previous to her current position, she had worked in Senior Project Management and Business Development at Harvard Clinical Research Institute (HCRI). Prior to HCRI, she had worked in technology transfer at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and Children’s Hospital Boston. At Children’s Hospital, she created the Corporate Sponsored Research Office, and managed corporate research relationships between investigators and sponsors. This included negotiating all clinical and most sponsored research agreements, and developing and implementing standard budget templates for clinical research. Her experience also includes managing clinical research programs at the Institute for Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease, Deaconess Hospital.

 

---

Sean G. Ward, MBA

Director of Finance, CTNI; Senior Research Administrator, Department of Psychiatry, MGH; Administrator, Mood and Anxiety Disorders Institute, MGH

Mr. Ward has over 20 years experience working on clinical trial research programs including many large multicenter industry sponsored studies. He has also provided financial oversight and coordination of  finances on many NIMH sponsored studies, including the recently completed STEP-BD  trial, the largest study ever done in bipolar disorder, involving 20 centers and a budget over 30 million dollars.

CONSULTANTS

---

The MGH Department of Psychiatry has one of the most comprehensive clinical research programs in the world, giving us the ability to draw on the expertise of our renowned faculty across psychiatry and related fields.

Consultants within Massachusetts General Hospital
Addiction
Eden Evins, MD
John Kelly, PhD
Mark H. Pollack, MD
Timothy Wilens, MD

Anxiety Disorders
Elizabeth Hoge, MD
Michael Otto, PhD
Mark H. Pollack, MD
Jerrold F. Rosenbaum, MD
Naomi Simon, MD
Jordan Smoller, MD, ScD
John Worthington, MD

Bipolar Disorder
Dan Iosifescu, MD
Andrew Nierenberg, MD
Michael Ostacher, MD
Roy Perlis, MD
Gary Sachs, MD

Depression
Jonathan Alpert, MD
Maurizio Fava, MD
Dan Iosifescu, MD
David Mischoulon, MD
Andrew Nierenberg, MD
George Papakostas, MD
Roy Perlis, MD
Jerrold F. Rosenbaum, MD

Geriatric Psychiatry
Deborah Blacker, MD
William Falk, MD

Neurology
Merit Cudkowicz, MD
Pediatric Psychopharmacology
Joseph Biederman, MD
Thomas Spencer, MD
Timothy Wilens, MD
Janet Wozniak, MD

Schizophrenia
Eden Evins, MD
Donald Goff, MD
David Henderson, MD
Anthony Weiss, MD

Women’s Mental Health
Lee Cohen, MD
Hadine Joffe, MD
Rita Nonacs, MD
Claudio Soares, MD
Adele Viguera, MD

Consultants outside Massachusetts General Hospital
The MGH CTNI has established collaborations with renowned faculty across psychiatry and related fields from all over the country. In addition, as a result over 2 decades of experience, we have relationships and access for consultation with the top leaders in their fields across North America and the world, including:

Sid Kennedy, MD (University of Toronto)
Mark Rapaport, MD (University of California, Los Angeles)
Steven Stahl, MD (University of California, San Diego)
Madhukar Trivedi, MD (University of Texas, Southwestern)