Stephan Heckers,MD, MSc

Chairman, Department of Psychiatry, Vanderbilt University
James G. Blakemore Professor in
Psychiatry and Professor of Radiology

Dr. Heckers graduated from Medical School at the University of Cologne, Germany, in 1988.  He completed his clinical training in Psychiatry between 1993 and 1997 at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA, and obtained a Master in Medical Sciences degree from Harvard Medical School in 2000.  Dr. Heckers was an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the Director of the Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder Program at McLean Hospital in Belmont, MA, when he accepted the offer to assume the Chair of Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University in 2006.

Dr. Heckers studies the neural basis of psychiatric disorders.  He is particularly interested in the disease mechanisms of two psychiatric disorders, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.  The Heckers laboratory combines neuroimaging experiments of brain structure and function in patients with basic research studies of the cellular and molecular basis of psychosis.  This approach allows Dr. Heckers to test hypotheses about the neural basis of psychosis at the level of brain circuits as well as neurons and genes.

Dr. Heckers has published more than 100 articles and book chapters and is frequently teaching medical students, physicians, and the lay public.  He is the recipient of several awards, including the Young Investigator Award from the International Congress on Schizophrenia Research, the Dr. Paul Janssen Schizophrenia Research Award, and the A.E. Bennett Award.  He has been honored twice by the Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatry Residents with the Teacher of the Year award.

Dr. Heckers is the Associate Editor of the Archives of General Psychiatry and is a member of the Scientific Council of the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression.