Center for Precision Psychiatry


Contact Information
Center for Precision Psychiatry
Richard B. Simches Research Building
185 Cambridge Street, 2nd Floor
Boston,
MA
02114
Explore This Center
About the Center
Precision psychiatry, an emerging field within precision medicine, aims to identify and leverage individual differences in biology, lifestyle, environment and the social determinants of health, to improve the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of mental health conditions. There is increasing recognition that neuropsychiatric disorders affect all walks of life and are responsible for an enormous burden of suffering, disability and even mortality.
The mission of the Center for Precision Psychiatry is to integrate research and clinical practice to enable more accurate risk prediction, targeted prevention, precise diagnosis and effective treatments for psychiatric disorders.
Drawing on expertise in big data analytics, genomics, neuroscience, precision medicine and clinical trials, The Center is uniquely positioned to lead the rapidly emerging field of precision psychiatry. The Center’s work focuses on some of the fundamental unsolved questions in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of mental illness, including:- How can we give clinicians the tools to better predict and prevent suicide?
- Can we use genomics and other biomarkers to improve diagnosis?
- Can we identify actionable strategies that can prevent depression among those at risk?
- Can we predict who will develop posttraumatic stress disorder after trauma so that we can enable targeted prevention?
- How can we move beyond a one-size-fits all, trial-and-error approach to treatment?
- How can we use the discoveries emerging from genetic research to develop new, more targeted treatments based on the biology of mental illness?
The Center's work will be focused in four strategic areas:
Precision Prevention: Developing strategies, using data-driven approaches, to enable risk prediction and preventive interventions for important mental health outcomes
Precision Treatment Optimization: Reducing trial-and-error prescriptions by using data-driven methods to more rapidly match individual patients to the most effective treatment, including medication, psychotherapy and digital health technologies
Precision Neuroscience and Novel Therapeutics: Developing new, more effective treatments based on our understanding of the causes of disease
Education, Training and Dissemination: Enabling new training and educational opportunities in the methods, tools and clinical practice of precision psychiatry
Our Events
Second Annual Conference on Precision Psychiatry: Innovation to Implementation
(November 2022)
First Annual Conference on Precision Psychiatry: The Promise of Precision Prediction, Prevention and Treatment in Mental Health (Sept. - Oct. 2021)

In the News
- March 8, 2022, Robbie Mealer, MD, PhD publication: The schizophrenia-associated variant in SLC39A8 alters protein glycosylation in the mouse brain Mol Psychiatry (2022)
- January 12, 2022 Publication: Mammalian brain glycoproteins exhibit diminished glycan complexity compared to other tissues. In this study led by CPP Faculty Member Robert Mealer, Williams et al. they map the brain protein glycome in detail, providing a road map for future studies to determine how genetic variations in glycosylation enzymes linked to schizophrenia affect brain biochemistry.
- March 17, 2021 Press Release: Suicide risk prediction models could be cost-effective in clinical practice
- Winter 2021 Mindscapes Newsletter: New Center Focuses on Precision Psychiatry to Reduce "Trial and Error"
- August 4, 2020 Robbie Mealer, MD, PhD publication: The schizophrenia risk locus in SLC39A8 alters brain metal transport and plasma glycosylation (Robert G Mealer, et al SciRep. 2020 Aug 4.)
- January 24, 2019 Psychology Today: More Evidence That Physical Activity Keeps Depression at Bay references study by Karmel Choi, PhD ("Physical activity offsets genetic risk for incident depression assessed via electronic health records in a biobank cohort study" Karmel W Choi, et al. 2020 Feb;37(2):106-114.doi: 10.1002/da.22967. Epub 2019 Nov 5.)
Our Team
Center Faculty
Director, Center for Precision Psychiatry
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Jordan Smoller, MD, ScD, 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 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 Mass General Department of Psychiatry, director of the Center for Precision Psychiatry and director of the Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Genetics Unit in the Mass General Center for Genomic Medicine. Dr. Smoller is a Tepper Family MGH Research Scholar and also serves as director of the Omics Unit of the Mass General Division of Clinical Research and co-director of the Mass General Brigham Biobank. 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 has played a leading role in national and international efforts to advance precision medicine. He is a Principal Investigator (PI) in the eMERGE (Electronic Medical Records and Genomics) network, founding PI of the PsycheMERGE Consortium and lead PI 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).

Director, Suicide Prevention Research Program
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Kate Bentley, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and assistant professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School. Her research focuses on the prediction and prevention of suicidal and nonsuicidal self-injurious thoughts and behaviors. Dr. Bentley completed her PhD in clinical psychology at Boston University and her predoctoral internship in the Mass General cognitive-behavioral therapy track. She currently holds a five-year National Institute of Mental Health career development award that focuses on using mobile devices to improve the short-term prediction of suicide risk following psychiatric hospitalization. She also has other ongoing projects focused on developing, evaluating and implementing scalable, transdiagnostic interventions for reducing suicide risk.
Karmel Choi, PhD
Director, Precision Prevention Program
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Karmel Choi, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and member of the faculty at Harvard Medical School. Her research focuses on stress-related conditions such as depression and PTSD, and uses methods from data science, epidemiology, and genetics to identify actionable strategies for prevention and resilience promotion across the life course. Dr. Choi completed her PhD in Clinical Psychology at Duke University and her predoctoral clinical internship in Behavioral Medicine at Mass General. She also completed a postdoctoral T32 training fellowship in psychiatric genetics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Choi’s clinical work focuses on the treatment of mood and anxiety disorders and stress-related health conditions.
Tian Ge, PhD
Director, Data Science
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Tian Ge, PhD is an applied mathematician and biostatistician who works at the intersection of neuroimaging science, genetics and statistics. His current research focuses on developing statistical and computational methods to integrate large-scale imaging, genomic, and biomedical data. Dr. Ge received his BS in Mathematics and PhD in Applied Mathematics from Fudan University, and a PhD in Computer Science from University of Warwick. He completed his postdoctoral training with Mert Sabuncu, PhD and Jordan Smoller, MD at Mass General and Harvard Medical School. He is currently an Instructor at Harvard Medical school, a junior faculty member in the Psychiatric & Neurodevelopmental Genetics Unit (PNGU), Center for Genomic Medicine, and is also affiliated with Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Richard Liu, PhD
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Richard Liu, PhD, focuses his research program on characterizing dynamic processes of risk underlying onset and recurrence of self-injurious thoughts and behaviors and depression in youth and young adults. He is currently the principal investigator of three NIMH-funded studies involving computational modeling of ecological momentary assessment data and ambulatory measures of psychosocial stress, family dynamics, sleep and physiological arousal, as well as neurocognitive markers of short-term risk for suicidal behavior in adolescents. is clinical training included pre-doc work at the University of Illinois at Chicago and post-doctoral work at both Brown University’s Alpert Medical School and the Kavli Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience. Richard earned his MA and PhD at Temple University and his BA at Cornell University.
Robbie Mealer, MD, PhD
Director, Precision Neuroscience and Novel Therapeutics Program
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Robbie Mealer, MD, PhD, completed clinical residency in the Mass General / McLean Adult Psychiatry Residency Program. He is currently an instructor in Psychiatry at Mass General and Harvard Medical School, staff psychiatrist at McLean Hospital and the recipient of the Stanley Center Psychiatric Genetics and Neuroscience Fellowship and the MGH Translational Neuroscience Training for Clinicians Fellowship. He received his undergraduate degree from Montana State University while performing basic neuroscience research with Thomas E. Hughes, PhD. He received his MD and PhD degrees from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, working in the lab of Solomon H. Snyder, MD. He is currently working with Dr. Jordan Smoller in the MGH PNGU on a project following up schizophrenia GWAS hits, looking for novel diagnostic and therapeutic biomarkers.
Administration
Amy O’C. Fitzpatrick, MBA, MSA
Managing Director
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Amy O'C. Fitzpatrick, MBA, MSW is responsible for the development, integration, and operational management of The Center’s initiatives, stakeholder engagement as well as high-level administrative and fiscal functions of The Center. Previously, Amy served as the senior administrative and finance director at Home Base, A Red Sox Foundation and Mass General program, and the nation’s largest private sector clinic treating the invisible wounds of war through world class clinical care, wellness and education for Veterans, Service Members and their Families. Amy earned her MBA at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania (Health Care Management with Strategic Planning concentration), MSW at the Boston College School of Social Work and her BA at the College of the Holy Cross.
Ashley Seiger, MSc
Senior Clinical and Research Administration Program Manager
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Ashley Seiger-Jones, MSc, is the senior clinical research and administrative program manager for The Center. Ashley has over a decade of clinical research experience and holds a Masters degree in Management, focused specifically on research administration. Ashley thrives on team inclusion and is passionate about streamlining processes to enhance study and team efficiencies across all phases of the research process.
Jody Camerario Roberts, BA
Grant Administrator
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Jody Camerario Roberts is a Grant Administrator in the Center for Precision Psychiatry. She holds a BA in healthcare administration with a minor in communications from Southern New Hampshire University and is currently pursuing her MBA. She is passionate about suicide prevention for depression and research for psychiatric disorders.
Kristin Joyce
Administrative Assistant
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Kristin Joyce is the assistant to Dr. Smoller. She has been employed with Mass General for over 25 years and has held this position since July 2013. Kristin is mission-driven, embraces diversity and has the proven ability to adapt to any given situation. She thrives when utilizing her interpersonal skills, prioritizing knowledge and multitasking abilities makes her an integral part of the team.
Fellows
Becky Fortgang, PhD
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Becky Fortgang's research program focuses on transdiagnostic processes of self-control and effort. In one line of research, she investigates the heritability and structure of these traits and their prevalence and relationships across genetically related disorders. In another, she focuses on self-control among other mechanisms and predictors of self-destructive behaviors, such as suicide and pathological gambling. In a third, she is particularly focused on the self-control required to initiate and maintain effortful activity and on effort disruptions in schizophrenia and mood disorders.
Andrew Grotzinger, PhD
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Andrew Grotzinger is a clinical psychology fellow at Mass General /Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on developing multivariate genomic methods that can be applied to understand the joint genetic architecture of complex traits. While on fellowship, he is excited to work with Dr. Jordan Smoller and Phil Lee, PhD, to unpack the genetic underpinnings of high levels of comorbidity across psychiatric disorders. Andrew completed his doctoral training in Clinical Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.
Heather Lee, PhD
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Heather Lee is a postdoctoral research fellow working with Dr. Jordan Smoller. She recently completed her PhD in psychiatric epidemiology from Brown University, focusing on prenatal immune activation as a potential predictor of offspring’s cognitive and psychiatric outcomes in the New England Family Study. During her postdoctoral training at PNGU, she has been excited to investigate the etiologic connections between immunological and psychiatric disorders using electronic health records and GWAS data.
Zhaowen Liu, PhD
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Zhaowen Liu is a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Smoller and Tian Ge, PhD. She received her PhD in computer science from Xidian University with research topic on omics data analysis in cancers. In addition, she received her co-supervised PhD training at Fudan University worked on imaging genetics. Her research interests focus on developing and applying algorithms integrating omics data, EHRs and multimodal brain imaging data. Her focus at Mass General will be mainly on developing new data mining methods to explore the genetic and neural correlates of psychiatric disorders.
Yi-Han Sheu, MD, MPH, ScD
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Yi-han Sheu is a postdoctoral research fellow working with Dr. Smoller. He received his MD degree at National Taiwan University and completed residency and fellowship training in psychiatry at National Taiwan University Hospital. He then went on to complete degrees of MPH in Healthcare Management and Policy and ScD in Epidemiology, both at Harvard University. His doctoral thesis involves using electronic health records data to improve treatment decision in psychiatric disorders by combining machine learning, artificial intelligence and epidemiological approaches. He is currently interested in increasing medical care precision by further extending the application of the methodologies above, and to achieve so, improving its prerequisites in general artificial intelligence, such as model interpretation and robustness, incorporation of causal inferential methods, effective transfer learning and building multi-modal knowledge representations.
Bo Wang, PhD
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Bo Wang, PhD, is a postdoctoral research fellow, working with Dr. Jordan Smoller at the Center. He received his PhD in natural language processing from University of Warwick, followed by postdoctoral training in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford and the Alan Turing Institute. He is interested in learning patient representation and modelling patient health trajectory from multi-modal data including clinical notes from EHRs. His current research focuses on suicide risk prediction and developing methods to improve the selection of treatments for depression.
Residents
Eric Ross, MD
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Eric Ross, MD, is a resident psychiatrist at Mass General and McLean Hospital. He graduated from Dartmouth College with a neuroscience/chemistry degree in 2011 and from the University of Michigan Medical School in 2018. His research focuses on the use of population-level mathematical modeling to address issues in public health, health economics and clinical decision-making. At Mass General, he's working on projects evaluating the health-economic effects of suicide risk prediction, the cost-effectiveness of novel treatments for depression and the approach to testing for medical causes of first-episode psychosis.
Data Science
Hyunjoon Lee, MS
Data Analyst
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Hyunjoon Lee is a Senior Data Analyst in The Center and in Jordan Smoller’s lab. Hyunjoon’s focus for his work is on analyzing and modeling using electronic health records data. Prior to joining The Center and the Smoller Lab, he was a data scientist for a tech start-up. He holds a BS in Computer Science and MS in Data Science from Brown University. He is especially interested in suicide prediction and interventions and hopes to earn his PhD in psychiatric epidemiology in the future.
Research Assistants
Rebecca Luh
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Rebecca Luh earned her BA in biology from Carleton College where she worked in a behavioral neuroscience lab investigating interactions between hormones and the brain that occur during puberty. This research led her to PNGU where she is excited to learn more about genetic determinants of brain function and structure as well as predictive modeling of psychiatric disorders.
Emily Madsen
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Emily Madsen graduated from SUNY Stony Brook University with a BS in biology specializing in developmental genetics. She previously worked closely with the clinical interpretation team of a clinical genetics laboratory focused on rare pediatric disorders. She is excited to learn more about complex trait genetics and psychiatric disorders.
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