Faculty

The Department of Psychiatry is mourning the recent passing of Jeffrey Yao, PhD, an esteemed member of our faculty and an international expert in the field of psychopharmacology. Dr. Yao was a Senior Research Career Scientist at the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System (VAPHS) where he also directed the Neurochemistry and Psychopharmacology Laboratory for over 30 years, and was a Research Professor of Psychiatry and...

Oliver Lindhiem, PhD is an accomplished clinical scientist in the area of parenting-based interventions to prevent and treat childhood disruptive behavior disorders. He has developed several tools that enable clinicians to diagnose disorders more accurately and to determine whether children and parents have successfully learned skills taught in treatment and use them in daily life. His innovative ideas challenge a...

Yanhua Huang, PhD has focused her research on neural plasticity within the reward circuitry of the brain. She studies molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying drug abuse and addiction and sleep-mediated regulation of reward-elicited behaviors. By studying neural plasticity in rodent models, she is working to characterize pathway-specific changes in the reward circuitry of the brain following sleep disturbances...

Dean F. Salisbury, PhD has conducted his extensive research career studying the pathology and pathophysiology in early psychosis—a field in which he is an international expert—with one ultimate goal in mind: early identification of the disorder. His research delves into understanding the basic dysfunctions that will lead to earlier identification, better interventions, and improved outcome in schizophrenia and...

Alexis Fertig, MD is an accomplished clinician and national expert in the area of eating disorders. She provides high-quality clinical care within the intensive outpatient, inpatient, and partial hospitalization eating disorders programs at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic. She is director of the UPMC Center for Eating Disorders and is the “go to“ person for difficult consults and complex cases. Dr. Fertig...

Carmen Andreescu, MD is an internationally recognized expert on the affective neuroscience of late-life mood and anxiety disorders. Her study of the functional and structural neural circuity of emotion dysregulation in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) led her pursue a novel set of hypotheses regarding severe worry as a central feature and organizing concept in research on the neurobiology of GAD. The development...