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I am a physician-scientist who specializes in the care of patients with obsessive-compulsive and related disorders. After completing my training in Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and McLean Hospital, I joined the faculty at MGH and Harvard Medical School (HMS), where I provide clinical care, supervise trainees, administer a clinic, and conduct research on obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) to enhance our knowledge and the quality of patient care. I additionally dedicate substantial effort to medical education, serving as an Associate Program Director of the MGH/McLean Hospital Psychiatry Residency Program and the Associate Director of the residency’s Physician Scientist Training Program. My roles at MGH and HMS comprise a combination of clinical care, teaching, and research.
My clinical interests and expertise revolve around the practice of adult outpatient and inpatient psychiatry. I am actively involved in clinical work, providing treatment for patients afflicted with obsessive-compulsive and related disorders. I work closely with expert colleagues in the Center for OCD and Related Disorders (CORD) at MGH, along with research collaboration with members of the OCD Institute at McLean Hospital. Within this context, I have taken on an additional leadership role as Assistant Medical Director of CORD. In the past year, I served as first author on a chapter for OCD and Related Disorders in Comprehensive Clinical Psychiatry. I have also directly supervised multiple trainees at MGH and HMS in this area, publishing two additional papers in the past year, one of which I served as the Senior Author. Finally, my investigation (see below) in behavioral phenotyping in OCD with McLean Hospital’s OCD Institute directly supports and complements my clinical activities, which have been published and presented in multiple venues over the past two years.
My research interests lie in the nosology of psychiatric illness. To achieve this, I was awarded a Sklar Fellowship from the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Genetics at The Broad Institute and continue my work in this area in collaboration with investigators at multiple sites. I employ computational approaches for behavioral classification, genomic studies, neuroimaging, and cognitive tasks in patients with OCD, with a goal to both improve our understanding of this disorder and enhance clinical care in both psychopharmacology and psychotherapy. I will continue this work in collaboration with the OCD Institute at McLean Hospital.
I additionally serve as an Associate Director of Psychiatric Studies in the Translational Research Center at MGH. Here I recruit, design, and run inpatient Phase I and II clinical trials in collaboration with industry leaders. Furthermore, I have initiated collaborations with other research groups at MGH who wish to pursue inpatient psychopharmacological studies. More recently, I began to mentor residents at Massachusetts General Hospital and a postdoctoral fellow from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in the study of OCD and related disorders. Here we completed and continue to pursue studies examining the role of novel treatments in the management of OCD and related disorders. Moreover, resident physicians that I supervise have begun to pursue clinical investigations at the Translational and Clinical Research Centers at MGH. Motivated by the interest from trainees and my keen interests in OCD and computational work, I recently began an R21 application that proposes the use of various metrics (wrist actigraphy, patient outcomes reported via smartphone technology, and electronic health records) to explore trans-diagnostic dimensions of behavior so that we may better target treatments and assess outcomes in both clinical research and clinical practice.
I am actively involved in teaching and supervision of medical students and residents at the MGH/HMS. One of my major roles in the residency is that of an Associate Program Director of the MGH/McLean Hospital Psychiatry Residency Program and the Associate Director of the residency’s Physician Scientist Training Program. In my role, I am directly involved in the medical education of residents, and I develop and lead a program with its own curriculum for residents who aspire to become clinician-scientists. To that end, I now serve as an MPI on a five-year NIMH R25 award to support our residents’ research training. I also work closely with residents in the Outpatient Psychiatry Division at MGH, where I serve as a clinical supervisor. Additionally, I serve as an instructor in the Mind, Brain, and Behavior course for first-year medical students at HMS. Having previously designed graduate-level courses in biological statistics at The Rockefeller University, I plan to adapt this knowledge to develop a similar course for residents and medical students at MGH and HMS. Finally, I recently developed and now direct a new selective for third-year residents that aims to improve residents’ knowledge and practice of OCD and related disorders, which includes a combination of didactic learning, mentored psychopharmacology intakes and follow-ups, and direct supervision in exposure and response prevention (ERP). Summary
I provide clinical care, administrative oversight in clinical, scholarly, and educational domains, and teaching, while conducting clinical trials in my area of clinical expertise. My teaching and multiple domains of leadership allow me to share my clinical and research expertise with trainees spanning MGH, McLean Hospital, and HMS.
Through my lecturing (at a local, regional, and national level), my written works (e.g., peer-reviewed original research, topical reviews of the literature, and book chapters in well-regard texts), my clinical research, and my involvement with professional societies I have sought to improve the care for patients with all psychiatric illnesses, focusing primarily on obsessive-compulsive and related disorders.