Genetics researcher is named inaugural Cohen Professor

Matthew W. State, M.D., Ph.D., an authority on the genetics of psychiatric disorders in children, has been named the first Donald J. Cohen Associate Professor of Child Psychiatry. State, also associate professor of genetics, and colleagues have studied rare genetic variations in disorders such as Tourette syndrome, autism and mental retardation. His work on the contribution of the gene SLITRK1 to Tourette syndrome was cited as one of the top 10 breakthroughs of 2005 by the journal Science.

State is co-director of the Yale Program on Neurogenetics. He received the Tourette Syndrome Association Early Career Research Award and now leads the Simons Foundation Genetics Consortium, a multicenter research effort aimed at discovering genes involved in autism. He maintains an active practice in community child psychiatry. State earned his undergraduate and medical degrees from Stanford University and completed his residency at UCLA’s Neuropsychatric Institute. He came to the Child Study Center (CSC) in 1997 as a postdoctoral associate, and concurrently earned his Ph.D. from the School of Medicine’s Department of Genetics in 2001.

Cohen, director of the CSC from 1983 to 2001, is recognized as one of the leading child psychiatrists of his generation. The new professorship in his honor was established with a $3 million fund made up of contributions from friends, colleagues, corporations and foundations that had grown in value over several years.