Center for Precision Psychiatry

• Leveraging large-scale genomic studies to identify the genetic basis of psychiatric disorders
• Using state-of-the art tools--including functional genomics and stem cell biology--to identify useful biomarkers and uncover mechanisms linking genes to disease

• First Annual Conference on Precision Psychiatry convening experts and showcasing cutting-edge research – September 30, 2021- October 1,2021 (Virtual)
• Training programs for future research scientists and clinicians in the methods, tools and clinical practice of precision psychiatry
• Developing educational materials (e.g. webinars, podcasts, and didactic modules) with a focus on enhancing risk assessment and management of patients at risk for suicide

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).

Kate Bentley, PhD, is a clinical psychologist whose research focuses on the prediction and prevention of suicidal and non-suicidal self-injurious thoughts and behaviors. Dr. Bentley received her doctorate in clinical psychology from Boston University and completed her clinical internship at Mass General in the cognitive-behavioral therapy track. She is currently funded by a five-year National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) career development award, mentored by Matthew Nock, PhD, at Harvard University and Jordan Smoller, MD, and Maurizio Fava, MD, in the Mass General Department of Psychiatry.

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 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, 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, 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.

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-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.

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.

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 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 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 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 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, 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Eugene is currently working in the Smoller lab as a clinical research coordinator. Prior to joining the Smoller Lab, he graduated from Williams College with a BA in Chemistry and Chinese and worked as a counselor for adolescent psychiatric patients. He hopes to learn more about the widespread factors influencing psychiatric disorders and the innovative tools that can address them.