Kerry J. Ressler

Kerry J. Ressler, MD, PhD, is chief scientific officer and James and Patricia Poitras Chair in Psychiatry at McLean Hospital. He is also a professor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and past-president of the Society for Biological Psychiatry. Dr. Ressler was previously an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Dr. Ressler’s lab focuses on translational research bridging molecular neurobiology in animal models with human genetic research on emotion, particularly fear and anxiety disorders. He has published over 350 manuscripts ranging from basic molecular mechanisms of fear processing to understanding how emotion is encoded in a region of the brain called the amygdala, in both animal models and human patients.