Severe Mental Illness: From Genes to Models to Mechanism

Save the date!

September 25th & 26th

This two-day symposium, chaired by Dr. Steve Hyman, Director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at Broad Institute, Dr. Guoping Feng of McGovern Institute at MIT and Director of the Neurobiology and Model Systems group of the Stanley Center, and Dr. Benjamin Neale of Massachusetts General Hospital and the Stanley Center, will bring together leading scientists working on the genetics and neurobiology of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism spectrum disorder and related neuropsychiatric disorders, with scientists working on translating genetic findings to models and mechanisms that will pave the way to effective therapeutics for these diseases.

The illnesses highlighted in this symposium cause lifelong disability to millions of persons – combined, more than 3% of the world population are affected by one of these severe disorders. As results emerge from large-scale genetics studies, shared and unshared risk factors across multiple disorders are beginning to coalesce around molecular mechanisms underlying these diseases. In the coming years neuroscientists will be increasingly able to put the emerging genetics to work in the service of new understandings of pathophysiology, the development of biomarkers, and much-needed new treatments. We hope, particularly, to attract graduate students and postdoctoral associates to this symposium in order to build this interdisciplinary field at a time of great opportunity.

Agenda coming soon!

Confirmed speakers list:

Amy Arnsten, Yale Medical

Beth Stevens, HMS

David Goldstein, Columbia

David Lewis, University of Pittsburgh

Guo-Li Ming, John Hopkins

Guoping Feng, MIT

Jacob Hooker, MGH

Marius Wernig, Standford

Mark Bear, MIT

Mark Daly, MGH