Steve Hyman

Steven E Hyman is Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor and Harald McPike Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology. He is also a Core Institute Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Director of the Broad Program in Brain Health that supports basic and translational research on brain disorders. Hyman is principal investigator of the Psychiatric Biomarkers Network, a multi-institutional and multi-sector collaboration focused on fluid biomarkers for schizophrenia spectrum and bipolar disorders. 

From 2012-2024 Hyman directed the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at Broad, from 2001 to 2011 he served as Provost (chief academic officer) of Harvard University, and from 1996 to 2001 he was Director of the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). At NIMH he worked to modernize its research investments, focusing on neuroscience, emerging genomic technologies, and initiating a series of large pragmatic clinical trials. He has served as Editor of the Annual Review of Neuroscience (2002-2016) and Chair of the International Advisory Committee at WHO on the revision of the Mental, Behavioral, or Neurodevelopmental Disorders chapter for ICD-11 (2006- 2014). He was founding President of the International Neuroethics Society (2008-2013), President of the Society for Neuroscience (2015), and President of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (2018). He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a distinguished life fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and a member of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) where he chaired the Forum on Neuroscience and Nervous System Disorders (2012-2018), served on the Council (2012-2018), and represented NAM on the governing board of the National Research Council, the operating arm of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2016-2019). He currently chairs the Boards of Directors of the Charles A. Dana Foundation (NY) and the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering (Geneva, Switzerland). 

In the private sector he is a Director of Voyager Therapeutics, Cyclerion Therapeutics, and Vesalius Therapeutics. He serves on the Scientific Advisory Boards of J&J Innovative Medicine and F-Prime Capital. He received his BA, summa cum laude, from Yale, an MA from the University of Cambridge, which he attended as a Mellon fellow studying History and Philosophy of Science, and an MD, cum laude, from Harvard Medical School.
 

Kris Dickson

Kris Dickson is an associate director and science advisor at the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. She works with co-directors Morgan Sheng and Ben Neale of the Stanley Center, and Patricia Kabitzke, senior advisor to the director, to develop and drive scientific strategy.

Prior to joining the Broad Institute in 2023, Dickson spent 18 years in science publishing and communication - as deputy editor at Neuron, as a freelance science writer and editor, and as the neurosciences senior editor and section manager at PLOS Biology. Dickson is conversant in all areas of neural and cognitive sciences through her own scientific work and her editorial and freelance science experiences. She now has a special focus on neuropsychiatric research at the Stanley Center.

Dickson earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry in the laboratory of Marvin Wickens at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, studying translational control mechanisms during early development. As a postdoctoral fellow and then an independent researcher, Dickson transferred her knowledge of translational control mechanisms to tackling our understanding of local translation in neurons and the molecular mechanisms involved in Fragile X syndrome, working first in Seth Grant’s laboratory and then independently at the University of Edinburgh.

Zhanyan Fu

Zhanyan Fu is associate director in the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard where she specializes in the study of synaptic and circuitry defects in genetic mouse models. An expert in the electrophysiological assessment of synaptic functions, Fu and her team hope to advance the understanding of the molecular and cellular mechanism of psychiatric disorders, and explore novel treatments of these diseases.

In addition to her role at the Broad, Fu is an associate member of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Prior to the Broad, Fu served as an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine at Duke University Medical Center. While at Duke, Fu focused on characterizing synaptic and circuit level defects in mouse models of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). In 2012, Fu received the NARSAD Young Investigator Award from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation.

Fu holds an M.B. from Zhejiang University School of Medicine in Hangzhou, China and a Ph.D. in neuropharmacology from the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Beijing Union Medical College. She completed her postdoctoral training at Georgetown University School of Medicine.
 

Evan Macosko

Evan Macosko is a neuroscientist and psychiatrist focused on developing new genomics technologies to study brain diseases.  Technological innovations he has led include Drop-seq, the first high-throughput single cell analysis method, and Slide-seq, a method for localizing gene expression within intact tissue sections. His lab works to extend these technologies to measure connections amongst neurons in the brain, and to uncover molecular mechanisms of schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease. He is the co-director of the newly established Center for Human Brain Cell Variation at the Broad, funded by the NIH Brain Initiative. Macosko is an attending psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital, an institute member of the Broad Institute, and an associate professor of psychiatry and neurobiology at Harvard Medical School.

Elise Robinson

Elise Robinson is an Assistant Professor in the Center for Genomic Medicine and Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and an Institute Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. She is also an affiliated faculty member with the Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Robinson’s research focuses on the genetic epidemiology of behavior and cognition. She is interested in using genetic data to understand the biology of neurodevelopmental variation, and to study differences within and between neuropsychiatric disorders. She co-chairs the Autism Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, and the Program in Neurodevelopmental Disorders at the Broad Institute.

The Robinson lab uses techniques from statistical genetics and epidemiology to study how common and rare genetic risk factors for severe neuropsychiatric disorders may differ, and develops approaches for examining these questions in large samples.

Robinson received a Sc.D. in psychiatric epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health, and completed postdoctoral training in statistical genetics at MGH and the Broad Institute.