Scientific Advisory Board

Dr. Maurizio Fava is Psychiatrist-in-Chief of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), executive director of the Clinical Trials Network and Institute, (MGH), associate dean for clinical and translational research and the Slater Family Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Fava is a world leader in the field of depression and clinical psychopharmacology. He has edited eight books and authored or co-authored more than 900 original articles published in medical journals with international circulation, articles which have been cited more than 100,000 times in the literature and with an h index greater than 155 on Google Scholar.

Dr. Fava obtained his medical degree from the University of Padova School of Medicine and completed residency training in endocrinology at the same university. He then moved to the United States and completed residency training in psychiatry at MGH. He founded and was director of the hospital’s Depression Clinical and Research Program from 1990 until 2014. Under Dr. Fava’s direction, the Depression Clinical and Research Program became one of the most highly regarded depression programs in the country, a model for academic programs that link, in a bi-directional fashion, clinical and research work. In 2007, he also founded and is now the executive director of the MGH Psychiatry Clinical Trials Network and Institute, the first academic CRO specialized in the coordination of multi-center clinical trials in psychiatry.

Dr. Fava has been successful in obtaining funding as principal or co-principal investigator from both the National Institutes of Health and other sources for a total of more than $150 million. Dr. Fava’s prominence in the field is reflected in his role as the co-principal investigator of STAR*D, the largest research study ever conducted in the area of depression, and of the RAPID Network, the NIMH-funded series of studies of novel, rapidly-acting antidepressant therapies. Dr. Fava is a well-known national and international lecturer, having given more than 300 presentations at national and international meetings. In 2009, Dr. Fava received the A. Clifford Barger Excellence in Mentoring Award from Harvard Medical School, and in 2013 the John T. Potts, Jr., MD Faculty Mentoring Award from Massachusetts General Hospital. He is also the former President of the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology.

Dr. Ken Gillman is a Clinical Neuro-pharmacologist and a retired clinical psychiatrist.  Ken has published many scientific review papers about neuro-pharmacology in prestigious journals.  Details are in PubMed, the ‘Publications’ menu and his “Google Scholar’ profile.

He is an internationally acknowledged authority on serotonin toxicity and also an expert in the area of MAOIs.   He has expertise in drug adverse reactions and interactions involving most drugs that affect the central nervous system, but especially: MAOIs, TCAs, SSRIs, and SNRIs.

Tom lnsel, M.D., a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, has been a national leader in mental health research, policy, and technology. From 2002-2015, Dr. Insel served as Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). More recently (2015 – 2017), he led the Mental Health Team at Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences) in South San Francisco, CA. In 2020, he co-founded Humanest Care, a therapeutic online community for recovery. Since May of 2019, Dr. Insel has been a special advisor to California Governor Gavin Newsom and Chair of the Board of the Steinberg Institute in Sacramento, California. He is the author of the forthcoming book Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health, to be published by Penguin Random House. He is currently developing MindSite, a non-profit digital publication focused on mental health issues. Dr. Insel is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and has received numerous national and international awards including honorary degrees in the U.S. and Europe.

Dr. Krystal is the Ray and Dagmar Dolby Distinguished Professor and Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Psychiatry at UCSF. He is also Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University. He is Director of the Clinical and Translational Sleep Research Laboratory in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurology at UCSF and the UCSF Dolby Family Centers for Mood Disorders. The primary focus of his research is the development of biomarkers for mood disorders and sleep disorders and their application in developing novel personalized treatments for these conditions. He has served as principal investigator for more than 60 trials of treatments for mood and sleep disorders consisting of a mix of industry and NIH-funded and single and multi-site trials. He is best known for leading the NIMH program “New Experimental Medicine Studies: Fast-Fail Trials in Mood and Anxiety Spectrum Disorders (FAST-MAS)”. This included leading a multi-site team in carrying out a landmark biomarker-focused Phase IIa study applying the “Fast-Fail” approach to treatment development in assessing the promise of the target, kappa opioid antagonism, as a treatment for anhedonia in patients with mood and anxiety spectrum disorders.

Dr. McIntyre is currently a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto and head of the Mood Disorders Psychopharmacology Unit at the University Health Network and a Professor of Psychiatry and Pharmacology University of Toronto in Toronto, Canada. Dr. McIntyre is on the DBSA Board of Directors and also serves as the Executive Director of the Brain and Cognition Discovery Foundation in Toronto, Canada. Dr. McIntyre was named by Thomson Reuters in 2014-2019, inclusive, as one of “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds”. This distinction is given by publishing the largest number of articles that rank among those most frequently cited by researchers globally in 21 broad fields of science and social science during the previous decade.

He has received several teaching awards from the University of Toronto, Department of Psychiatry and has been a recipient of the joint Canadian Psychiatric Association (CPA) / Council of Psychiatric Continuing Education Award for the Most Outstanding Continuing Education Activity in Psychiatry in Canada. Dr. McIntyre is the co-chair of the Canadian Network for Mood and Anxiety Treatments (CANMAT) Task Force on the Treatment of Comorbidity in Adults with Major Depressive Disorder or Bipolar Disorder and as well a contributor to the CANMAT guidelines for the treatment of Depressive Disorders and Bipolar Disorders. Dr. McIntyre has published hundreds of peer-reviewed articles and has edited and/or co-edited several textbooks on mood disorders.

Dr. McIntyre completed his medical degree at Dalhousie University. He received his Psychiatry residency training and Fellowship in Psychiatric Pharmacology at the University of Toronto.

Alan F. Schatzberg received his M.D. from New York University in 1968.  He did his psychiatric residency at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center/Harvard Medical School (HMS).

After serving in the United States Air Force, he joined the staff at McLean Hospital and the faculty of HMS where he held a number of positions including Interim Psychiatrist in Chief and Director of the Depression Research Facility.  He later became Clinical Director of the Massachusetts Mental Health Center and Professor of Psychiatry at HMS.  In 1991, he moved to Stanford University to become the Kenneth T. Norris, Jr., Professor and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.  He served as Chair until 2010 and directs the Stanford Mood Disorders Center.

He has been an active investigator in the biology and psychopharmacology of depressive disorders.  He has authored over 700 publications and abstracts, including Schatzberg’s Manual of Clinical Psychopharmacology, whose ninth edition appeared in 2019 and is co-authored by Dr. Charles DeBattista.  He also co-edited the Textbook of Psychopharmacology whose fifth edition appeared in 2017 and was Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Psychiatric Research.  He is a Past President of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) and the Society of Biological Psychiatry (SoBP).  His numerous awards include the: Mood Disorders Research Award from the American College of Psychiatrists, APA Award for Research, Anna Monika Award, Kraepelin Gold Medal from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Gold Medal from the SoBP, etc.   He has been elected into the National Academy of Medicine and has received three honorary doctorates.

Dr. Stahl has held faculty positions at Stanford University, the University of California at Los Angeles, the Institute of Psychiatry London, the Institute of Neurology London, and, currently, as clinical professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the University of California Riverside, adjunct professor of psychiatry at the University of California San Diego and as Honorary Fellow in Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge. Dr. Stahl serves as editor-in-chief of CNS Spectrums and is Senior Academic Advisor and Director of Psychopharmacology for the California Department of State Hospitals (DSH) where he has a leadership role in addressing violence and decriminalization of the seriously mentally ill in the five-hospital 6500 patient DSH.

Author of over 560 articles and chapters with an H index of 62, and more than 2000 scientific presentations and abstracts, Dr. Stahl is an internationally renowned clinician, researcher and teacher in psychiatry with subspecialty expertise in psychopharmacology.  Dr. Stahl has written 53 textbooks and edited 15 others, including the best-selling and award winning textbook, Stahl’s Essential Psychopharmacology, now in its fifth edition and the best-selling and award-winning clinical manual, Essential Psychopharmacology Prescriber’s Guide, now in its seventh edition.  Dr. Stahl has also published a novel, Shell Shock, a thriller that recounts the history of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).