STEVEN E. HYMAN, M.D.

Director, National Institute of Mental Health

National Institutes of Health

Bethesda, Maryland

Steven E. Hyman, M.D. is Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the component of the National Institutes of Health charged with generating the knowledge needed to understand, treat, and prevent mental illness. Under Dr. Hyman’s leadership, NIMH has heightened the priority it gives to four broad areas: (1) fundamental research on brain, behavior and genetics; (2) rapid translation of basic discoveries into research on mental disorders and their treatment; (3) research focused on improving the lives of people with mental disorders, including clinical trials and studies of preventive interventions conducted in “real world” settings; and (4) research on childhood mental disorders. Dr. Hyman continues to direct an active research program in molecular neurobiology on the NIH campus (Bethesda, MD), focused on how the neurotransmitter dopamine regulates gene expression in neurons in the brain.

Prior to his position at NIMH, Dr. Hyman was Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Director of Psychiatry Research at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He also taught neurobiology at Harvard Medical School and was the first faculty Director of Harvard University’s Interfaculty Initiative in Mind, Brain, and Behavior. In addition to his scientific writings, Dr. Hyman has authored and edited several widely used basic and clinical textbooks. He serves on advisory boards internationally including the Riken Brain Sciences Institute in Japan, the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the United States. Among his awards, Dr. Hyman is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Hyman received his B.A. from Yale in 1974 (summa cum laude), and his M.A. from the University of Cambridge in 1976, where he was a Mellon fellow studying the history and philosophy of science. He received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School (cum laude) in 1980. Following an internship in Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), a residency in psychiatry at McLean Hospital, and a clinical fellowship in neurology at MGH, he was postdoctoral fellow at Harvard in molecular biology.