Our Research

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Center for Precision Psychiatry & Mental Health has three primary areas of research that support our vision.  All three areas are well underway, engaging researchers and partners around and outside Columbia.  Below is a brief overview of each area of research focus.

Etiologies of Mental Illness

The SNF Center’s work to understand the underlying causes of mental illness are focused primarily in three areas. These areas of research will allow the SNF Center to identify where there are etiological subtypes of mental illness that might lead to more detailed diagnosis and potential treatment.

The first area of focus is our work with the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) to examine the biological causes of mental illness for patients from the New York State public mental health system, including patients in OMH’s 14 inpatient Psychiatric Centers.  This work will lead to a deeper understanding of what may be underlying these patients’ psychiatric conditions.

The second area of focus is the identification of robust neural biomarkers associated with specific psychiatric disorders. This work will aid in subtyping disorders by identifying distinct neural patterns associated with specific symptom clusters, monitoring their progression and helping to match patients with the most effective interventions for their specific neurobiological profiles.

The third area of focus is our partnership with Columbia’s Department of Biomedical Informatics to employ machine learning and artificial intelligence to a wide-ranging examination of electronic health records of patients with significant mental health challenges to uncover previously undiscovered patterns of symptom progression. This work will lead to major opportunities to arrest progression at earlier stages of illness and discover approved medication and treatment practices with the highest likelihood of success.

Translational Neuroscience

This area of the SNF’S Center’s research uses experimental disease models and state-of-the-art neuroscience and computational approaches to understand the fundamental biological mechanisms in the brain that are affected in mental illness. The goal of this work is to rationally guide development of biomarkers as well as therapeutic interventions aiming at either altered neural circuitry itself or the underlying biological pathways. Building on groundbreaking work from Columbia University and our partnership with the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute (ZMBBI) and the Columbia University neuroscience community in general, SNF Center efforts in this area are critical to achieving its mission.

Clinical Trials and Research

SNF Center research is focused on both the potential for clinical trials of new treatments as well as clinical research that can help provide state-of-the-art mental health evaluations and Precision Psychiatry services to patients with undiagnosed mental health challenges. Clinical trials will build upon our work on the etiologies and biological mechanisms of mental illness and bring together cohorts of patients who carry pathogenic mutations for severe mental illness in which few treatment options are currently available. In addition, our partnership with the NIH-funded Undiagnosed Disease Network (UDN) would establish the Center as a national referral site for patients whose primary presenting symptoms are psychiatric.