MGH McLean Adult Psychiatry Residency Program

Today Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (TSE: 4502) and the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) announce the Honorees of the inaugural Innovators in Science Award for their commitment to and excellence in neuroscience research.

The Winner of the Senior Scientist Award is Shigetada Nakanishi, M.D., Ph.D., Director, Suntory Foundation for Life Sciences Bioorganic Research Institute in Japan. Nakanishi is honored for developing innovative cloning strategies for membrane embedded transmitter receptors and subsequent identification of functional genes encoding NMDA and G-protein coupled glutamate receptors.

The Winner of the Early-Career Scientist Award is Viviana Gradinaru, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. Gradinaru is honored for exemplary work in developing novel tools for neuroscience and using them to probe circuits underlying locomotion, reward, and sleep.

Also recognized as Award Finalists for discoveries ranging from neural mechanisms underlying cognitive function and emotional and social behaviors, the role of astrocytes at synapses in health and disease, and ion channels that enable somatosensation and pain perception are:

Senior Scientist Finalists:

Ben Barres, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Neurobiology, Stanford University School of Medicine

David Julius, Ph.D., Professor and Chair of Physiology, UC San Francisco

Michael Halassa, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Neuroscience, New York Universitye

Kay Tye, Ph.D., Whitehead Career Development Assistant Professor of Neuroscience, Massachusetts Institute of Technologye

These individuals will be honored at the 2017 Innovators in Science Award Ceremony and Symposium on November 28-29, at the New York Academy of Sciences in New York City.

See full post at https://www.takeda.com/newsroom/newsreleases/2017/innovators-in-science-award-honorees/

Scott Rauch, M.D., President and Psychiatrist in chief of McLean Hospital

The University of Cincinnati College of Medicine recently awarded the John Shaw Billings, MD, Alumni Leadership Award to Scott L. Rauch, MD, president and psychiatrist in chief of McLean Hospital. The Billings Award is given annually to recognize an alumnus for a career of extraordinary leadership and contributions to medical progress. Recipients also deliver the commencement address at the medical school’s annual Honors Day.

"Dr. Rauch is a highly respected investigator and very quickly became a leader in his field,” said University of Cincinnati College of Medicine Dean Thomas Boat. "His success opened the door to leadership opportunities for him at the top psychiatric hospital. He is influential in his field and obviously one of the leading clinicians and investigators in the country.

Rauch also recently received the 2014 Research Mentorship Award, an award jointly sponsored by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the American Association of Chairs of Departments of Psychiatry (AACDP). The award is given in recognition of substantial and formative contributions to the mentoring of students and residents throughout a distinguished career in psychiatric research, and honors an academic psychiatrist who has fostered the pursuit of student research in a significant manner within his/her university department. The award was presented to Rauch in May at the APA Annual Meeting in New York.

"I take pride in the positive impact I feel that I have had,” said Rauch. "While there is nothing more gratifying than helping an individual patient or family, as my career has progressed, my roles have evolved to try and be helpful through the multiplying effects of advancing science through research, mentoring others, and by developing programs, or most recently implementing a vision for McLean Hospital. Ultimately, I have been most fulfilled by seeing people and programs grow, especially when I have felt some responsibility for those positive changes.”

Dr. Rauch received his undergraduate degree with honors in Neuroscience from Amherst College and attended medical school at the University of Cincinnati. He completed his residency training in Psychiatry as well as a Radiology Research Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Dr. Rauch served for many years as Associate Chief of Psychiatry for Neuroscience Research at MGH, where he was the founding Director of the Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program and the MGH Division of Psychiatric Neuroscience Research and Neurotherapeutics.

Currently, Dr. Rauch is President and Psychiatrist in Chief of McLean Hospital, Chair of Partners Psychiatry and Mental Health, and holds the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Endowed Chair of Psychiatry at McLean. He also holds an appointment as Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Rauch has contributed over 350 publications to the scientific literature and serves on the editorial boards of several journals. He has received numerous honors, including the 2004 Joel Elkes Award for outstanding contributions in translational research within psychiatry.

Content sourced from a McLean Hospital press release by Jenna Brown.

In their Annual “America’s Best Hospitals” list, U.S. News & World Report MGH was ranked as the top hospital for psychiatry in the U.S., a distinction it has earned 17 times in the last 19 years. McLean was ranked as the top freestanding psychiatric hospital in the country , a distinction it has held for 18 years, and fourth overall. For the complete list please see the U.S. News & World Report website here.

June of every year is a significant time for PGY4 residents, and not just because it brings warmer weather. June is the time when PGY4 residents give their Senior Talk, a brief presentation what each resident has learned during their residency before the start their post residency careers. The subject of each talk varies, from an exploration of how shame affects both the patient and the psychiatrist to how creating a genetically modified mouse can help further our understanding of eating disorders. For a complete list of the speakers and their topics, please refer to the bottom of the article.

Additionally, each June the MGH/McLean recognizes some of our residents for their outstanding work in the clinic as well as in the lab. Please see below for the full list of award recipients.

• Hackett Award – Jennifer Gatchel, MD, PhD
• Joyce and Richard Tedlow Award – Rachel Ross, MD, PhD
• Paul Howard Award – Stephanie Cincotta, MD
• Ed Messner Award – Heather Vestal, MD, MHS
• Anne Alonso Award – Kathryn Tompkins, MD
• Mel Kayce Award – Christina Brezing, MD
• Laughlin Award – Alex Keuroghlian, MD, MSc
• Outstanding Contribution to Neuroscience Award – Evan Macosko, MD, PhD

The Jonathan F. Borus Outstanding Early Career Educator Award in medical student education has been awarded since 2011 to a junior faculty member at Harvard Medical School who has demonstrated exceptional promise, initiative and commitment in the area of psychiatric education. The award is named in honor of Jonathan F. Borus MD, the Stanley Cobb Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, Emeritus Chair of Psychiatry at the Brigham and Women’s and Faulkner Hospitals, Director of Medical Education at BWH and Co-Chair of the Partners Education Committee, who has exerted a major and lasting impact on psychiatric undergraduate and graduate education. In addition to being a master educator and educational leader, Borus is known widely for his generous mentorship and outspoken advocacy for generations of trainees who themselves have made important contributions to medical education.

Joseph Stoklosa (pictured above, Class of 2011), psychiatrist in charge of McLean’s Psychotic Disorders Unit, has been selected by the Harvard Medical School (HMS) Psychiatry Executive Committee as the 2014 co-recipient of the Jonathan F. Borus Early Outstanding Early Educator Award.

The MGH/McLean Adult Psychiatry Residency is committed to fostering the research aspirations of promising psychiatric scientists. While our NIMH-funded Research Concentration Program provides support to residents during clinical training, a critical time for a researcher's career is immediately following their residency, before they have received extramural funding (e.g. a NIH Career Development, or K, Award). But as a newly announced fellowship shows, this crucial "bridge" period is increasingly well-supported by a range of opportunities for MGH/McLean residents.

On November 18th, the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, which is part of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, announced a new post-graduate residency research fellowship exclusively available to MGH/McLean residents. The Stanley Center Fellowship for Psychiatric Genetics and Neuroscience will provide one to two years of post-residency salary support, representing at least 70% effort, for recently graduated residents beginning careers in psychiatric research. The effort represents a new partnership between the residency and the Stanley Center, which is directed by Steve Hyman, MD, a former McLean resident who later served as head of NIMH and then Harvard Provost, before taking on the Stanley Center post. Read the full announcement for this award here.

This new fellowship joins a host of other research opportunities available to MGH/McLean residents during their PGY5 and PGY6 years. (more…)

In June, 2013, some of our senior residents were honored for their outstanding work:

• Hackett Award – Avi Gerstenblith, MD
• Joyce Tedlow Award – Justin Chen, MD
• Paul Howard Award – Leah Bauer, MD
• Ed Messner Award – Justin Chen, MD
• Anne Alonso Award – Oriana Vesga Lopez, MD
• Mel Kayce Award – Benjamin Herbstman, MD, MHS
• Laughlin Award – John Taylor, M.D., M.B.A.
• Outstanding Contribution to Neuroscience Award – Mike Halassa, MD, PhD

On Friday, June 21, 2013 McLean Hospital recognized Academy Award-nominated director David O. Russell for his work to raise public awareness of mental illness. Russell toured McLean Hospital, which he called the "gold standard" of mental health care facilities. Russell has personal insight to offer the character development, as his son is diagnosed with bipolar disorder. "There's a whole population of people who need something that is as caring and thoughtful and experienced as McLean is," said Russell.

Read the full article in the Boston Globe here.

Mass General was ranked the #1 hospital in the nation, according to the annual U.S. News & World Report “America’s Best Hospitals” list released Tuesday, a first for the hospital in the 22-year history of the survey.  McLean Hospital received its highest ranking since 1994, placing second among all psychiatric services nationwide. McLean also continues to be ranked as the nation’s top free-standing psychiatric hospital—a distinction it has held for more than a decade. Joining McLean at the top of this year’s list are John’s Hopkins at number one and MassGeneral at number three.

“Each year we have been both honored and humbled to be recognized among the nation’s highest achieving hospitals, and this year it is especially gratifying to be ranked number one,” said Peter L. Slavin, MD, MGH president.

Steve Seiner, MD, Associate Director of the Residency Program, won the APA Nancy C.A. Roeske Certificate of Excellence in Medical Student Teaching presented at the 2012 APA Meeting and again during the 2012 Harvard Medical School Psychiatry Medical Student Education Awards Ceremony. Oriana Vesga-Lopez, Class of 2013, was awarded one of the Harvard Medical School Resident Teaching Awards from the HMS Class of 2012.

Michael Halassa, Class of 2013, recently published a first author paper in Nature Neuroscience, describing work he carried out at MIT in the lab of Christopher Moore, now at Brown University.  By selective optical control of thalamic activity, Mike and colleagues demonstrated that sleep spindles can be causally generated with millisecond precision to understand their role in physiology and behavior. The work was carried out while Mike was a PGY1 and PGY2 in the Research Concentration Program.

Mike was also recently awarded a NIH pathway to independence career award (K99/R00) through the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the first time such an award has been obtained by a current MGH/McLean resident.

In Spring 2011, the residency program was awarded an Institutional Research Education Grant (R25) from the National Institute for Mental Health. Under the leadership of Maurizio Fava MD and Shelly Greenfield MD, MPH and with support from over fifty junior and senior research faculty across our two campuses, this five-year, $250K education grant is designed to foster research training and mentorship for all residents in our program.  In addition, the grant allows the residency to further develop the Research Concentration Program, a program established in 2007 to optimize clinical and research training for residents with substantial research experience who plan to embark on psychiatric research careers.  John Denninger, MD, PhD, and Dost Ongur, MD, PhD will serve as co-director of the RCP, with recent graduate Justin Baker MD, PhD, serving as Associate Director.