News

We are delighted to announce that Rameshwari Tumuluru, MD, has been promoted to Professor of Psychiatry by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. 

Dr. Tumuluru earned her MBBS from Gandhi Medical College in India. Following an internship at Gandhi Hospital, she came to the United States for psychiatry residency training at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia. She completed her child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship at The Ohio State University, then joined the University of Pittsburgh Department of Psychiatry faculty. An outstanding clinician, Dr. Tumuluru is board certified in both general adult and child and adolescent psychiatry. She provides clinical care as an attending psychiatrist at UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital (WPH) Psychiatric Emergency Services; the Center for Autism & Developmental Disorders Child Outpatient Clinic; the Center for Autism & Developmental Disorders Adult Inpatient Unit; and the Services for Treatment of Early Psychosis clinic. 

Responding to a tremendous need for community-based care, Dr. Tumuluru was instrumental in developing WPH’s adolescent Acute Partial Hospitalization Program (APHP), the region’s first hospital diversion initiative for adolescents with a range of psychiatric diagnoses, located in Pittsburgh’s Southside neighborhood. Dr. Tumuluru serves as medical director of both the APHP and the Afterschool Intensive Outpatient Program (AIOP). Under Dr. Tumuluru’s oversight, the AIOP provides a wide range of individualized, intensive therapeutic socialization and skills development opportunities, as well as individual and family interventions.

Dr. Tumuluru is highly collaborative with Pitt Psychiatry research colleagues, and serves as a co-investigator on the National Institutes of Health-funded Alzheimer Biomarker Consortium -Down Syndrome U19. In addition, she is a consultant and recruitment site director for a National Institute of Mental Health R01 focused on the role of sleep health in proximal suicide risk among ultra-high-risk adolescents. Dr. Tumuluru has served as co-investigator on more than a dozen pharmacologic treatment trials of children and adults with developmental disabilities.

In terms of teaching, under Dr. Tumuluru’s leadership, the Southside clinic is a crucial training site for the evaluation and treatment of youth with complex psychiatric needs. Dr. Tumuluru serves as the rotation director and supervisor for general psychiatry and triple board residents training at the APHP and AIOP, and leads the AIOP elective for psychiatry residents.

Dr. Tumuluru’s activities in diversity, equity, and inclusivity (DEI) are integrated across patient care, teaching, and research. She holds multiple DEI leadership roles in the Department, including as a member of the DEI Leadership and Advisory Council. Dr. Tumuluru has provided multiple trainings for residents and fellows on topics related to DEI, and recent faculty development teaching includes organizing and facilitating Department-wide workshops. On a national level, she has published a cultural psychiatry curriculum that she co-developed for the American Academic of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

“Dr. Tumuluru has been tremendously successful in leading the Acute Partial Hospitalization Program and Afterschool Intensive Outpatient Program, establishing the Southside clinic as a critical site for the provision of high-quality child and adolescent psychiatric care, for training, and for research recruitment,” said David Lewis, MD (Chair, Department of Psychiatry). “In addition, she has distinguished herself as an outstanding, longtime advocate for DEI, integrating social justice concepts into her approach to clinical care, training, and research, and skillfully disseminating her expertise in this realm.”

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Tumuluru!