Psychiatry professor named chair

John H. Krystal, M.D. ’84, was named chair of the Department of Psychiatry, effective July 1. Krystal, the Robert L. McNeil, Jr., Professor of Translational Research, will also serve as chief of psychiatry at Yale-New Haven Hospital. He is director of the Center for the Translational Neuroscience of Alcoholism, and he also heads the Clinical Neuroscience Division of the Veterans Affairs National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and the Veterans Affairs Alcohol Research Center at Yale. Since 2000, he has served as the department’s deputy chair for research.

Krystal is an internationally renowned expert on the neurobiology and treatment of schizophrenia, alcoholism, depression, and PTSD. His work is distinguished by its emphasis on translational neuroscience, the effort to combine emerging brain imaging and molecular genetic technologies with psychopharmacology to better understand alterations in brain function associated with psychiatric disorders. His research on the glutamate system in the brain has led to new experimental treatments for several psychiatric disorders.

Krystal succeeds William H. Sledge, M.D., who led the department as interim chair during the past year, and Benjamin S. Bunney, M.D., who served as chair for two decades until his retirement in 2008.