Massachusetts General Hospital | Psychiatry

Jordan Smoller, M.D., Sc.D. Director
Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Genetics Unit
Center for Human Genetic Research
Massachusetts General Hospital
Richard B. Simches Research Center
185 Cambridge Street
Boston, MA 02114
Phone: 617-643-3106
Email: jsmoller@hms.harvard.edu

Dr. Jordan Smoller is Associate Vice Chair of the MGH Department of Psychiatry and Director of Psychiatric Genetics. He is Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. He is Director of the Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Genetics Unit in the MGH Center for Human Genetics Research. Dr. Smoller also serves as co-director of the Genetics and Genomics Unit of the MGH Clinical Research Program. At Harvard Medical School, he is Director of the Translational Genetics and Bioinformatics Program of the Harvard Catalyst. He is also Science Director of the Science of Health and Development Initiative at the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. Dr. Smoller is an Associate Member of the Broad Institute and a Senior Scientist at the Broad’s Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research.

Dr. Smoller earned his undergraduate degree at Harvard University and his medical degree at Harvard Medical School. After completing residency training in psychiatry at McLean Hospital, Dr. Smoller received masters and doctoral degrees in epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. He also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the NIMH Training Program in Psychiatric Genetics.

The focus of Dr. Smoller’s research interests has been the identification of genetic determinants of childhood and adult psychiatric disorders. Dr. Smoller and colleagues have also been studying pharmacogenetic predictors of treatment response and the ways in which advances in genetics may impact clinical practice in psychiatry. He is an author of more than 150 scientific articles, book chapters and reviews; the recipient of numerous research awards; and a principal investigator on NIH-funded studies of the genetics of anxiety and the genetics of bipolar disorder, major depression and schizophrenia.

STAFF LIST

Faculty |  Post-Docs | Administrative Team |  Clinical Research Team | Graduate Students | Alumni

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Faculty

Mei-Hua Hall, PhD, MSc

Mei-Hua Hall is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and an assistant neuroscientist at McLean Hospital. Dr. Hall is a graduate of Lancaster University, University College London (UCL) (M.Sc. in Experimental Methods in Psychology), and King’s College London, Institute of Psychiatry (PhD, Psychiatric Genetics). Her current research is centered on translational psychiatric genetics research in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Further, she is interested in studying the application of neurophysiological endophenotypes as a tool for characterizing disease risk genes.

 

Phil Hyoun Lee, PhD, MS

Phil Lee is an Instructor at Harvard Medical School and a graduate of Seoul National University (B.S. in Computer Science and Statistics), Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (M.S. in Bioinformatics), and Queen’s University (PhD in Computational Biology). Her research interests include computational biology, biomedical informatics, machine learning and data mining. She applies these interests through studies of genetic variation and disease-gene association and expression studies. Further, Ms. Lee is interested in heterogeneous biomedical data integration and modeling.

 

Mireya Nadal-Vicens, MD, PhD

Mireya Nadal-Vicens is an Assistant in the Department of Psychiatry and an instructor at Harvard Medical School. She also serves as a research liaison for the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry fellows at MGH and is an Assistant Editor for the Harvard Review of Psychiatry. Dr. Nadal-Vicens is a graduate of King's College, Harvard-Radcliffe College, Stanford University (M.S. in Neuroscience), Harvard Medical School and Harvard University (PhD in neuroscience). She completed her residency through the MGH-McLean Combined Adult Psychiatry Residency Program and her fellowship through the MGH-McLean Combined Child & Adolescent Psychiatry program.

Dr. Nadal-Vicens' research interests include stress and the role of adverse events in precipitating psychiatric disorders. She also studies animal models of social defeat and the role of astrocytes in psychiatric disorders. Currently, she is studying the effects of psychotropic modulation on Drosophila aggression.

Niels Rosenquist, MD, PhD

Niels Rosenquist is an Instructor in Psychiatry at MGH, an Instructor at Harvard Medical School, and a Chief Economist for the Division of International Medicine at MGH. Dr. Rosenquist obtained his bachelor's degree at the University of Michigan and is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Medical School and the Wharton School (PhD, Applied Economics). He was a Clinical Fellow in Psychiatry at MGH and a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Harvard Medical School Department of Health Care Policy. Dr. Rosenquist's research interests include neuroeconomics, genetics, addiction, and social networks.

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Post-Docs

Erin Dunn, ScD, MPH

Erin C. Dunn is a graduate of Northeastern University (BS Psychology and Elementary Education), Boston University School of Public Health (MPH Public Health), and the Harvard School of Public Health (ScD Social and Psychiatric Epidemiology).  She is particularly interested in using interdisciplinary approaches to better understand the etiology of depression in children and adolescents.  Her recent research is focusing on gene by social environment interplay in psychiatric disorders.

 

Laramie Duncan, PhD

Laramie Duncan is a graduate of the University of Georgia (BS Environmental Sciences) and the University of Colorado at Boulder (joint PhD in Neuroscience and Clinical Psychology & Certificate in Behavioral Genetics).  She is interested in identifying genetic variants underlying a class of related phenotypes: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, psychosis, and mania, in the service of elucidating the etiology of these phenomena.  She is particularly interested in multi-SNP/variant analyses and the use of statistical methods that evaluate measures of data other than the mean (for example, variance).

 

Lauren McGrath, PhD

Lauren McGrath is a graduate of Brandeis University (BS Neuroscience, BA Psychology) and the University of Denver (MA and PhD: Child Clinical Psychology & Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience).  Her research focuses on genetic risk factors for developmental psychopathology and neurodevelopmental disorders.  She is particularly interested in the role of intermediate phenotypes, developmental trajectories, and gene x environment interactions in clarifying complex genotype-phenotype relationships.

Alisha Pollastri, PhD

Alisha Pollastri is a graduate of Duke University (BA, Psychology and Biological Anthropology) and Clark University (MA and PhD, Clinical Psychology).  Her research interests include the ways in which the chronic stress of a low-income, urban environment may interact with genes to influence psychopathology.  She is currently examining genetic and environmental influences on dysregulated anger and aggression in children.

 

Nadia Solovieff, PhD

Nadia Solovieff is a graduate of Boston University with a PhD in Biostatistics.  Her research interests include genetic risk prediction models, methods for genome-wide association studies and population stratification.  She is currently studying the genetics of post traumatic stress disorder and other psychiatric illnesses.

 

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Administrative Team

Erin Anderson, Staff Assistant

Erin Anderson is the staff assistant for Dr. Smoller. She graduated from Boston University in 2011 with a BA in psychology. Erin's research interests include understanding and preventing mental illness using a public health approach. Her hometown is Wheaton, Illinois, and in her free time she enjoys cooking, reading, and meditating. 

 

Alison Hoffnagle, Program Manager

Alison Hoffnagle is the Program Manager for the Smoller group.  She attended Skidmore College for her undergraduate degrees (BA in German language, BS Theater) and is currently enrolled in the Master of Science in Management program at Emmanuel College.  Alison has extensive experience working as a Project Manager and most recently for the World Mental Health Survey Initiative.

 

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Clinical Research Team

Caitlin Clements, Clinical Research Coordinator

Caitlin is a clinical research coordinator for the Smoller group and the Center for Experimental Drugs and Diagnostics. Caitlin graduated from Yale University with a BS in psychology. Her research interests include genetics and autism. Her hometown is Chargin Falls, Ohio, and in her free time she enjoys sports, participating in international development causes, and writing.

 

 

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Graduate Student

Jessica Agnew-Blais

Jessica Agnew-Blais is a doctoral student in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, specializing in psychiatric epidemiology. Jessica's research focuses on cognitive functioning and decline in psychiatric disorders, as well as the contribution of social factors to the risk and prevention of disease. She is working with Dr. Smoller on a project investigating the relation between folate intake and the risk of cognitive decline and dementia.

Jessica grew up in Burlington, Vermont and attended Stanford University, where she received a Bachelor's degree in Human Biology. Before beginning her doctoral work, she earned a Master of Science from the Harvard School of Public Health. When Jessica isn't doing epidemiology, she enjoys rock climbing, traveling and baking and eating pie.

 

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Alumni

Faculty
Roy Perlis
Christine Finn

Visiting Investigators
Carolina Blaya
Soraya Seedat

Post-docs
Jennifer Barnett
Sarah Bergen
Jie Huang
Anna Wiste

Program Managers
Holly Sciortino

Project Managers
Francine Molay
Priya Moorjani
Beth Rosen-Sheidley

Office/Grants Managers
Talia Goldsmith
Jennifer Pinto
Katie Sklarsky
Jamie Weller
Samantha Schwartz

Analysts
Lori Thomas

Laboratory Managers
Jes Fagerness, JD

Laboratory Technicians
Natalie Balkema
Aditi Basu, MS
Jacqueline Crane
Daisy Dai
Allan Guiney
Boyd Gunnell
John Kennedy
Catherine Mayerfeld
Miles Nugent
Gerri Tangren
Jenna Tarasoff
Lesley Yamaki

Research Coordinators
Stefanie Block
Maria Bulzacchelli
Erica Gardner-Schuster
Connie Guille
Tamar Kaim
Stephanie Racette
Lisa Susswein
Lisa Watras
Sydney Weill
Candace White
Mirella Young

Lab Interns
Noura Al-Juffali
Shannon Bean
Katherine Beattie
Jennifer Bourne
Sofia Chua-Rubenfeld
Catherine Demers
Sam Levin
Sony Mysore
Cameron Peebles
Sara Rubenstein
Liz Rubin
Jared Soundy

Undergraduate Thesis Advisee
Malorie Snider

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Selected Projects:

• Exposure, D-Cycloserine Enhancement, and Genetic Modulators in Panic Disorder (Mark Pollack, PI) Co-Investigator
  The major goals of this project are to compare the acute efficacy of DCS augmentation relative to placebo augmentation of CBT for the treatment of patients with panic disorder, examine the longer-term effects of DCS, and to examine whether genetic loci strongly implicated in the neurobiology of fear conditioning and extinction are associated with extinction learning in response to CBT alone or CBT/DCS treatment.

• Gene Regulation and Linkage Analysis in Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia (Bruce Cohen and Dost Ongur, PIs) Subcontract PI
  The goal of this study is to examine genetic variants associated with psychotic disorders in a large cohort of patients with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and bipolar disorder.

• Genetic and Environmental Predictors of Trauma-Related Outcomes in Hurricane Katrina Survivors (Mary Waters, PI) PI of Subcontract
  The major goals of this project are to examine whether specific genetic polymorphisms modify the effect of social and individual environmental exposures on post-hurricane adjustment, including PTSD.

• Genetic Dissection of Anxious Temperament PI
  The major goal of this project was to identify genetic influences on behavioral inhibition a temperamental profile linked to anxiety and mood disorders. Methods include family-based association analysis and linkage disequilibrium studies of candidate loci derived from mouse models of anxious temperament.

• Genomic Superstruct (Randy Buckner, PhD and Jordan W. Smoller, MD, ScD, PI’s) Co-Investigator
  The major goals of this project are to build a large-scale repository of brain and behavioral data to facilitate genetic studies by the scientific community and to perform genomewide analyses to identify common and rare variants underlying the neural basis of psychiatric disorders.

• International Cohort Collection for Bipolar Disorder PI
  The major goals of this project are to collect a large cohort of bipolar disorders cases and unaffected controls, and construct a harmonized data source for genome-wide studies combining phenotypic data from the U.S. case-control sample with a parallel, separately funded European case-control sample.

• Improving Outcomes in the Pharmacotherapy of Social Anxiety Disorder (Mark Pollack, PI) Co-Investigator
  The goal of this study is to compare the relative efficacy of treatments for social anxiety disorder and to examine predictors and moderators of treatment response including genetic polymorphisms (pharmacogenetic predictors).

• Psychiatric GWAS Consortium: Genomic Follow-up Next-Gen Sequencing & Genotyping (Mark Daly, PI) Co-investigator
  The major goals of this project are to elucidate the allelic spectrum of major psychiatric disorders by integrating empirical data for all readily measurable types of genetic variation of etiological relevance (common SNP, rare exonic, and rare and common copy number variation polymorphisms).

• Reward Processing and Genetic Risk for Impulsive Aggression: The Role of HTR1b (Joshua Buckholtz, PI) Co-PI
  The major goals of this project are to examine the effect of genetic variation in HTR1B on neural and behavioral measures of reward sensitivity and aggression-related traits.

• Using Genetics to Dissect Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, and Depression PI
  The major goal of this project is to combine phenotypic and genetic data from three large multicenter NIMH-funded treatment studies to dissect genetic influences on schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression.

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Please see a complete list of Dr. Smoller's publications