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Mary Phillips, MD, MD (Cantab)

  • Pittsburgh Foundation-Emmerling Endowed Chair in Psychotic Disorders
  • Director of the Mood and Brain Laboratory, The Clinical and Translational Affective Neuroscience Program
  • Professor, Psychiatry and Translational Science

    Education & Training

  • Medical School – Cambridge University, London, England – MD
  • Residency - Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital, London, England - Psychiatry
Research Grants

NIH Grants:  R01, P50, (3) R01

Research Summary

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 on 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 Outstanding Research in Mood Disorders in 2017. In 2018, she was elected President of the Society of Biological Psychiatry. In 2019, she received the University of Pittsburgh Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award, and a Method to Extend Research in Time (MERIT) award from the National Institute of Mental Health.

Dr. Phillips has received numerous 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 a mentor to 12 K awardees, has extensive national and international collaborations, and has authored or co-authored more than 300 publications.

Representative Publications
  1. Acuff HE, Versace A, Bertocci MA, Ladouceur CD, Hanford LC, Manelis A, Monk K, Bonar L, McCaffrey A, Goldstein BI, Goldstein TR, Sakolsky D, Axelson D, LAMS Consortium, Birmaher B, Phillips ML.  Association of neuroimaging measures of emotion processing and regulation neural circuitries with symptoms of bipolar disorder in offspring at risk for bipolar disorder.  JAMA Psychiatry.  2018 Dec 1;75(12):1241-1251. doi: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2018.2318
  2. Chase HW, Fournier JC, Bertocci M, Greenberg T, Aslam H, Stiffler R, Lockovich J, Graur S, Bebko G, Forbes EE, Phillips ML (2017). A pathway linking reward circuitry, impulsive sensation seeking and risky decision making in young adults: identifying neural markers for new interventions. Translational Psychiatry 7: e1096. doi: 10.1038/tp.2017.60 [PMID: 28418404] PMCID in process
  3. Bertocci MA, Bebko G, Versace A, Fournier J, Iyengar S, Olino T, Bonar L, Almeida JR, Perlman SB, Schirda C, Travis M, Gill MK, Diwadkar VA, Forbes E, Sunshine JL, Holland SK, Kowatch RA, Birmaher B, Axelson D, Horwitz SM, Frazier TW, Arnold LE, Fristad MA, Youngstrom EA, Findling RL, Phillips ML (2016). Predicting clinical outcome from reward circuitry function and white matter structure in youth. Molecular Psychiatry. doi: 10.1038/mp.2016.5. [Epub ahead of print] [PMCID: PMC4993633]
  4. Versace A, Acuff H, Bertocci M, Bebko G, Almeida JCR, Perlman S, Leemans A, Schirda C, Aslam H, Dwojak A, Bonar L, Travis MJ, Gill MK, Demeter C, Diwadkar V, Sunshine J, Holland S, Kowatch R, Birmaher B, Axelson D, Horwitz S, Frazier T, Arnold LE, Fristad M, Youngstrom E, Findling R, Phillips ML. (2015). White Matter Structure in Youth with Behavioral and Emotional Dysregulation Disorders: A Probabilistic Tractographic Study. JAMA Psychiatry 72(2):367-76. doi: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2014.2170. [PMCID: PMC4415624].
  5. Phillips ML, Swartz HA (2014). A critical appraisal of neuroimaging studies of bipolar disorder: toward a new conceptualization of underlying neural circuitry and roadmap for future research. American Journal of Psychiatry 171:829-843. doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.2014.13081008 [PMCID: PMC4119497]
  6. Phillips ML, Kupfer DJ (2013). Bipolar Disorder Diagnosis: Challenges and Future Directions. The Lancet 381:1683-71. [PMID 23663952]