Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior

Overview

John McGeary, PhD is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Human Behavior. His research focuses on the intersection of neuroscience, genetics, and clinical psychology to inform questions of etiology and treatment.  He directs a molecular lab located at the Providence VA Medical Center where he is also a staff psychologist treating Veterans with substance use disorders.  He actively collaborates on 65+ research projects with investigators at Brown, affiliated hospitals and collaborating institutions and consortia (e.g., Million Veteran Program) around the country.  Dr. McGeary’s research interests include: 1) genetic and epigenetic variation associated with psychiatric and behavioral phenotypes (and recently with phenotypes of interest to researchers in Dermatology, Surgery, Infectious Disease, Neuroscience, Computer science, Gerontology, and Public Health); 2) the role of sleep in suicide, addiction, and other psychopathology; and 3) the use of neurostimulation for treatment of addiction. Particular strengths in his research portfolio include studies of addiction phenotypes, anxiety phenotypes, mood phenotypes, nonpsychiatric behavioral phenotypes (e.g., sleep, exercise, & obesity) and pharmacogenetics (the use of genetic profiles to predict medication efficacy and side-effects). With a focus on team science, Dr. McGeary is an active member on 11 currently funded grants (& ongoing analyses from 81 completed grants) and is an author on 170 published papers.  He is grateful for the opportunity to work with such a wide variety of experts and seeks to leverage existing datasets with new data collection and new collaborators to address emerging scientific questions.

Brown Affiliations

Research Areas