The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for Precision Psychiatry & Mental Health

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Center for Precision Psychiatry & Mental Health at Columbia University is the first of its kind: An organization designed specifically to catalyze the scientific innovation and clinical implementation of precision medicine to advance the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of mental illness.

By applying the advances of precision medicine to psychiatry, the SNF Center will create breakthroughs that will further our understanding of the biological causes of mental illness and discover novel treatments for alleviating suffering from currently untreatable conditions. By addressing biological causes, the Center will work to address societal disparities in the treatment of mental illness.

The Center was established through a $75 million grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), an international philanthropic organization, as part of SNF’s Global Health Initiative (GHI). It is a joint effort of the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Columbia’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. It is embedded within Columbia University’s unique ecosystem of research and clinical services and draws upon expertise from the Columbia-affiliated New York Genome Center and the New York State Office of Mental Health.

The SNF Center is led by its co-directors:

• Joseph Gogos, MD, PhD, Professor of Physiology, Cellular Biophysics, Neuroscience and Psychiatry; Principal Investigator at the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute
• Steven A. Kushner, MD, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry; Principal Investigator at the New York State Psychiatric Institute
• Sander Markx, MD, Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Director of the Center for Precision Neuropsychiatry at the New York State Psychiatric Institute