People
Christopher Pittenger, MD, PhD
Director
Associate Professor Tenure
Director, Yale OCD Research Clinic
Co-Director, Neuroscience Research Training Program
Research Interests
Basal Ganglia Diseases; Tourette Syndrome; Learning; Molecular Biology; Neuroanatomy; Neurobiology; Neurophysiology; Neurosciences; Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder; Phobic Disorders; Psychopharmacology; Trichotillomania
Christopher Pittenger earned his MD and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University, where his graduate work was done with Nobel Prize recipient Eric Kandel. He returned to Yale University - where he had done his undergraduate studies - for residency and research training in psychiatry in 2003. He joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor in 2007 and was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 2013.
During his Ph.D. studies in basic neurobiology, he became fascinated by the brain's ability...
Michael Howard Bloch, MD, MS
Assistant Director
Associate Professor in the Child Study Center
Associate Director, Albert J. Solnit Integrated Training Program
Associate Director of the Tic and OCD Program
Research Interests
Child Psychiatry; Tourette Syndrome; Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder; Trichotillomania; Meta-Analysis; Neuroimaging; Psychiatry and Psychology
Michael H. Bloch, M.D., M.S. graduated from Yale School of Medicine and completed his child and adult psychiatry training at Yale. He is currently serving as chief resident at the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit in the Yale Department of Psychiatry. His research interests focus on studying Tourette syndrome (TS), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and trichotillomania (TTM) across the lifespan. His research focuses on developing better treatments for children and adults with these...
Alan Anticevic, PhD
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and of Psychology
Co-Director, Division of Neurocognition, Neurocomputation, and Neurogenetics (N3)
Research Interests
Affect; Mental Disorders; Cognition; Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted; Emotions; Memory, Short-Term; Schizophrenia; Computational Biology; Substance-Related Disorders; Neuroimaging
Clinical Interests
Adult
Dr. Anticevic trained in Clinical Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience at Washington University in St. Louis where he worked with Drs. Deanna Barch and David Van Essen. Following his graduate training, Dr. Anticevic completed his internship in Clinical Neuropsychology at Yale University. After internship, he joined the Yale University Department of Psychiatry as research faculty while concurrently serving as the Administrative Director for the Center for the Translational Neuroscience of...
Eileen Billingslea, MA
Research Associate Psychiatry
Eileen Billingslea has a long history of involvement with a variety of research programs in the Yale Department of Psychiatry; she has worked at the OCD Research Clinic since 2008. She manages patient data, human research protection compliance and documentation, and supervises other aspects of the clinic’s day-to-day function.
Michael J Crowley, PhD
Assistant Professor in the Child Study Center
Michael J. Crowley, Ph.D. is a child psychologist whose work focuses on key questions in social and affective neuroscience. Dr. Crowley earned his doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2004, where he studied under Nathan Fox. At Maryland, Dr. Crowley’s training focused on child internalizing and externalizing disorders. He completed a child-focused clinical internship through the Brown University Clinical Psychology Training Consortium. Dr....
Thomas V Fernandez, MD
Assistant Professor in the Child Study Center and of Psychiatry
Research Interests
Anxiety Disorders; Child Psychiatry; Genetics; Genetics, Behavioral; Tourette Syndrome; Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder; Psychiatry; Tic Disorders; Stereotypic Movement Disorder
Clinical Interests
Anxiety Disorders; Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity; Mental Disorders; Child Psychiatry; Genetics; Tourette Syndrome; Mental Health; Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder; Tic Disorders; Stereotypic Movement Disorder; Mood Disorders; Substance-Related Disorders
Thomas Fernandez, MD, is a child psychiatrist and psychiatric geneticist who has an active clinical practice and research laboratory. Tom is a graduate of Princeton University and Yale University School of Medicine, with additional research training at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. He completed residency training in child, adolescent, and adult psychiatry in the Solnit Integrated Residency Program at Yale. As a faculty member in Yale Child Study Center and the...
Patricia Gruner, PhD
Associate Research Scientist in Psychiatry
Assistant Director, Yale OCD Research Clinic
Patricia Gruner, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist who specializes in OCD. She has specialized training in cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) with patients with OCD and related disorders, neurocognitive assessment, and neuroimaging. Dr. Gruner completed her doctoral training in Clinical Psychology at Fordham University. She then completed postdoctoral training in Clinical Neuroscience at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, where she conducted fMRI and neurocognitive research in...
Michelle Hampson, PhD
Associate Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging and of Psychiatry and in the Child Study Center
Director of real-time fMRI
Research Interests
Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Neurosciences; Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder; Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic; Video Games; Neurofeedback; Psychiatry and Psychology
After completing an undergraduate degree in Computing Science at the University of Alberta, Dr. Hampson did her graduate work in Boston University's Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems, a department focused on computational neural network models of brain systems. She came to Yale as a postdoc to pursue her interests in human functional neuroimaging. During her postdoc, Dr. Hampson conducted some of the earliest studies of resting-state functional connectivity, validating the technique...
Stephen Kichuk, MPH
Research Assistant 2 HSS
Stephen came to the clinic with a long-held interest in anxiety disorders and OCD. His current interests center on behavioral healthcare access, delivery, and quality, and social-emotional learning programs. He coordinates studies, supervises participant recruitment and data collection, conducts clinical assessment, and manages the clinic's social media accounts.
John H. Krystal, MD
Robert L. McNeil, Jr. Professor of Translational Research and Professor of Psychiatry and of Neuroscience
Chair, Department of Psychiatry
Chief of Psychiatry, Yale-New Haven Hospital
Director: NIAAA Center for the Translational Neuroscience of Alcoholism
Director, Clinical Neuroscience Division, VA National Center for PTSD
Research Interests
Alcoholism; Drug Therapy; Genetics; Neurobiology; Psychiatry; Schizophrenia; Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic; Veterans; Neuroimaging
Dr. Krystal is a leading expert in the areas of alcoholism, schizophrenia, and post-traumatic stress disorder. His work links psychopharmacology, neuroimaging, molecular genetics, and computational neuroscience to study the neurobiology and to develop novel treatments for these disorders. He is best known for leading the discovery of the rapid antidepressant effects of ketamine in depressed patients.
He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine. He also serves in a variety of advisory...
James Frederick Leckman, MD, PhD
Neison Harris Professor in the Child Study Center and Professor of Pediatrics
Research Interests
Adolescent Psychiatry; Child Psychiatry; Tourette Syndrome; Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder; Psychiatry; Tic Disorders; Global Health
Clinical Interests
Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity; Tourette Syndrome; Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
James F. Leckman, M.D. is the Neison Harris Professor of Child Psychiatry, Psychiatry, Psychology and Pediatrics at Yale. Dr. Leckman is a well known child psychiatrist and patient-oriented clinical investigator. For more than 20 years he served as the Director of Research for the Yale Child Study Center.
His peers have regularly selected him as one of the Best Doctors in America. Dr. Leckman is the author or co-author of over 430 original articles published in peer-reviewed journals, twelve...
Chiang-Shan Ray Li, MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Psychiatry and of Neuroscience
Research Interests
Alcohols; Behavior and Behavior Mechanisms; Mental Disorders; Biological Therapy; Central Nervous System; Nervous System; Nervous System Diseases; Psychological Phenomena and Processes; Therapeutics; Behavior Control; Research Subjects; Drug Users; Psychiatry and Psychology
Graeme F Mason, PhD
Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging and of Psychiatry
Director Metabolic Modeling and Director Psychiatric MRS
Director, Neuroimaging Sciences Training Program
Chair, Magnetic Resonance Research Center Protocol Review Committee
Research Interests
Alcoholic Intoxication; Alcoholism; Amino Acids; Carbohydrates; Central Nervous System Diseases; Fatty Acids; Mathematical Computing; Substance Withdrawal Syndrome; Tobacco Use Disorder; Mood Disorders; Cocaine-Related Disorders; Alcohol-Induced Disorders, Nervous System; Molecular Mechanisms of Pharmacological Action; Physiological Effects of Drugs; Neuroimaging
Dr. Grame F. Mason develops experimental models and methods for studies of brain metabolism using 1H and 13C Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and Mass Spectrometry in conjunction with 13C isotopic labeling in vivo, in cell preparations, and other systems. His work began during his graduate studies at Yale where he used a rat model for the experimental determination of brain glucose transport kinetics, energetics, and neurotransmitter metabolism. Dr. Mason received further training at the...
Linda C Mayes, MD
Arnold Gesell Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics and Psychology in the Yale Child Study Center
Chair, Yale Child Study Center
Special Advisor, Dean
Research Interests
Adolescent Psychiatry; Child Psychiatry; Chronic Disease; Electrophysiology; Epidemiology; Pediatrics; Stress, Psychological; Behavior, Addictive; Psychiatry and Psychology
Dr. Linda Mayes is the Arnold Gesell Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Psychology and Director of the Yale Child Study Center. She is also Special Advisor to the Dean in the Yale School of Medicine. Trained as a pediatrician, Dr. Mayes’s research focuses on stress-response and regulatory mechanisms in young children at both biological and psychosocial risk. She has especially focused on the impact of prenatal substance use on children’s long-term outcomes. She has made...
Helen Pushkarskaya, PhD
Associate Research Scientist in Comparative Medicine
Dr. Pushkarskaya focuses on neurobiology of individual differences in decision making under uncertainty (risk, ambiguity, conflict and ignorance) in healthy and clinical populations. The most recent group of projects investigates abnormal patterns in preferences toward uncertainty in Obsessive Compulsive and Hoarding disorders. She received her undergraduate training in Math and Physics at Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics and postdoctoral training in...
Gerard Sanacora, PhD, MD
Professor of Psychiatry
Director, Yale Depression Research Program
Co-Director, Yale New Haven Hospital Interventional Psychiatry Service
Research Interests
Amino Acids; Behavior and Behavior Mechanisms; Mental Disorders; Nervous System Diseases; Drugs, Investigational
Clinical Interests
Adult; Depression
Dr. Sanacora completed an NIH sponsored Medical Scientist Training Program at the State University New York at Stony Brook, earning his Ph.D. in Physiology and Biophysics in 1992 and his M.D. degree in 1994. He then moved to Yale University where he completed his internship at Yale-New Haven Hospital, the Clinical Neuroscientist Training Program Residency in the Department of Psychiatry, and an NIH funded Neuroimaging Scientist Training Program Fellowship. He is currently an Associate Professor...
Matthew State, MD, PhD
Research Interests
Autistic Disorder; Mental Disorders; Child Development Disorders, Pervasive; Tourette Syndrome; Schizophrenia, Childhood; Tic Disorders; Asperger Syndrome
Clinical Interests
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Staff
Research Associate Psychiatry
- Office 203.974.7768
- Fax 203.974.7662
- Email eileen.billingslea@yale.edu
Research Assistant 2 HSS
- Office 203.974.7534
- Fax 203.974.7662
- Email stephen.kichuk@yale.edu
Nurse Manager
- Office 203.974.7523
- Fax 203.974.7662
- Email suzanne.wasylink@yale.edu
Collaborators
Alan Anticevic, PhD
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and of Psychology
Co-Director, Division of Neurocognition, Neurocomputation, and Neurogenetics (N3)
Patricia Gruner, PhD
Associate Research Scientist in Psychiatry
Assistant Director, Yale OCD Research Clinic
Michelle Hampson, PhD
Associate Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging and of Psychiatry and in the Child Study Center
Director of real-time fMRI
John H. Krystal, MD
Robert L. McNeil, Jr. Professor of Translational Research and Professor of Psychiatry and of Neuroscience
Chair, Department of Psychiatry
Chief of Psychiatry, Yale-New Haven Hospital
Director: NIAAA Center for the Translational Neuroscience of Alcoholism
Director, Clinical Neuroscience Division, VA National Center for PTSD
James Frederick Leckman, MD, PhD
Neison Harris Professor in the Child Study Center and Professor of Pediatrics
Graeme F Mason, PhD
Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging and of Psychiatry
Director Metabolic Modeling and Director Psychiatric MRS
Director, Neuroimaging Sciences Training Program
Chair, Magnetic Resonance Research Center Protocol Review Committee
Linda C Mayes, MD
Arnold Gesell Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics and Psychology in the Yale Child Study Center
Chair, Yale Child Study Center
Special Advisor, Dean
Gerard Sanacora, PhD, MD
Professor of Psychiatry
Director, Yale Depression Research Program
Co-Director, Yale New Haven Hospital Interventional Psychiatry Service
Past Research Staff
Mac Kelly, MAPP
Former Research Assistant
Mac Kelly came to the clinic with an interest in anxiety disorders like OCD. He worked on participant recruitment, screening, assessment, and appointment coordination, as well as worked to establish the OCD Research Clinic's social media pages. He remains an affiliate member of the clinic while completing work on his experience-sampling project on daily symptoms of OCD in adults. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in clinical psychology.
Ryan Simpson, MS
Former Research Assistant
Ryan joined the OCD Clinic staff to gain experience with patients suffering from anxiety disorders. During his time with the clinic, Ryan worked with patient file management, patient screening and assessment, and data management for all OCD Clinic studies. Additionally, Ryan assisted with collaborating partners of the OCD clinic and helped train Yale staff on the Biopac data acquisition machine. He also assisted with the facilitation efforts of the Clinic’s bimonthly OCD support group.