Patrick F. Sullivan, MD, FRANZCP, M. Hayworth & Family Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Genetics and Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, is one of two researchers awarded the 2014 Lieber Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Schizophrenia Research.
The $50,000 cash award from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation is given in recognition of a research scientist who has made distinguished contributions to the understanding of schizophrenia. It rewards past achievement and provides further incentive for an outstanding working scientist to continue to do exceptional research into the causes, prevention, and treatment of schizophrenia.
"The 2014 Outstanding Achievement Prizewinners have dedicated their lives to solving some of the most intractable psychiatric problems in order to improve the lives of millions of people and their families," said Jeffrey Borenstein, MD, CEO of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation. "We applaud their past and future accomplishments."
As a psychiatric geneticist, Dr. Sullivan works to decode the molecular and cellular consequences of genetic variations underlying schizophrenia. He heads large, multinational projects across a range of disorders, dividing his time between Sweden, where he is a Professor at the Karolinska Institutet, and UNC, where he is the Director of the Center for Psychiatric Genomics.
As founder and lead investigator of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC), Dr. Sullivan directs 300 scientists from 70 institutions in 19 countries who are conducting mega-analyses, involving 90,000 participants, of genetic risk for schizophrenia, depression, autism, bipolar disorder and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. He is also the principal investigator for a Swedish genetic study of 10,000 patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, one of the few projects looking into the impact of environmental factors in these disorders.
The other winner of this year's award is David Braff, MD, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Schizophrenia Program at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. He is also Director and Lead Scientist of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) multi-site Consortium on the Genetics of Schizophrenia (COGS).
Common brain network connected to heterogeneous patterns of brain atrophy in schizophrenia