PEOPLE

I am a psychiatrist who aims to develop an integrated clinical, scientific, and neuroethical pursuit of immune-molecule dysfunction in psychiatry. I hold a BS and MS in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from Yale University; an MSc in Neuroscience from Trinity College, Dublin (where I was a George Mitchell Scholar); a DPhil in Neuroethics from Oxford University (where I was a Rhodes Scholar); and an MD and PhD (in Neuroscience) from Harvard Medical School (HMS). I completed psychiatry residency at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH)/ HMS program and transitioned to clinical and research faculty in July 2024. I started a new immune psychiatry consultation clinic where I see patients from the BWH and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) (Neuroimmunology, Immunology, Rheumatology and Psychiatry) when there are psychiatric symptoms and known or possible autoimmune diseases, such as autoimmune encephalitis or lupus.  I have a two-pronged research focus. The first is translational neuroimmune psychiatry where I focus on the discovery of novel biomarkers. The second is in neuroethics, which applies the methodology of analytic philosophy to issues of moral importance in neuroscience, psychiatry, and neurology, regarding ethical challenges and opportunities related to biomarker development. My scientific investigations focus on discovery of clinically useful autoantibody biomarkers in psychiatric and neuropsychiatric disease, including diagnostic biomarkers, prognostic biomarkers, and biomarkers to guide choice of pharmacological treatments. I am currently striving to to parse heterogeneity in cognitive outcomes in bipolar disorder using high throughput methods to quantify autoantibodies across the whole proteome. I am also investigating immune biomarkers of the profound neutropenia sometimes seen with the medication, Clozapine, which limits the use of this otherwise remarkably effective antipsychotic medication.  My previous scientific doctoral work at Harvard focused on the innate immune system and psychosis, specifically the complement cascade, and its regulation, in a synaptic pruning hypothesis of schizophrenia. My investigations in neuroethics focus on the implications of novel bio technologies for psychiatry, neurology, law, and society, especially regarding biomarker development.  I am the author of the book, “The Neuroethics of Biomarkers: What the Development of Bioprediction Means for Moral Responsibility, Justice, and the Nature of Mental Disorder” (published by Oxford University Press and awarded the Carol Davis ethics award by the American psychiatric Association for an outstanding contribution to literature on the ethics of psychiatry). I teach neuroethics in the Havard Master’s program in Bioethics and have mentored trainees from medicine, philosophy, neurosurgery, psychiatry, neuroscience, and law.