Dr. Mary L. Phillips, M.D., M.D. (Cantab)

Dr. Mary Phillips is the Pittsburgh Foundation-Emmerling Endowed Chair in psychotic Disorders, and Professor in Psychiatry and Clinical and Translational Science in the University of Pittsburgh. She heads the Clinical and Translational Affective Neuroscience Program in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Phillips’ research focuses on using multimodal neuroimaging techniques to elucidate functional and structural abnormalities in emotion processing, reward processing and emotional regulation circuitries that are associated with specific psychiatric disorders, and symptom dimensions in individuals with mood and anxiety disorders. Her research also focuses on identifying the neurodevelopmental trajectories in these circuitries that are associated with the development of such disorders in youth and infants, and the extent to which these neuroimaging techniques can identity biomarkers reflecting underlying pathophysiologic processes that denote future risk for these disorders in as yet unaffected youth. Her more recent work examines how neuromodulation techniques can be targeted on identified neural biomarkers of mood disorders, as a step toward developing new interventions for individuals with these disorders. She works in collaboration with basic neuroscientists in translational studies of neural circuitry abnormalities in these disorders. 

Dr. Phillips trained in Medicine at Cambridge University, UK, and in Psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital and the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College, University of London, UK. She joined the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh as a full-time faculty member in July, 2005. In 2005, Dr. Phillips became a member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology; in 2006, she was awarded the Nellie Blumenthal Independent  Investigator Award by the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation (National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Depression); in 2012, became a Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology; and, in 2014, she became a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation and received the Joel Elkes Research Prize of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology.  In 2017, she became President Elect of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, has served on the Membership Committee of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, and on Program Committees of both the Society of Biological Psychiatry and the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. In 2016, she was elected to the Scientific Council of the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, and received the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation Colvin Prize for research in mood disorders in 2017. 

Dr. Phillips has received research funding awards from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation in the U.S., and the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust in the UK. Dr. Phillips has mentored over 60 junior investigators, including being mentor to 11 K awardees, has extensive national and international collaborations, and has authored or co-authored more than 300 publications.