Francis Lee

Francis Lee is the Mortimer D. Sackler Professor and Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Psychiatry at Weill-Cornell Medical College, and attending psychiatrist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He received his MD and PhD from the University of Michigan, and psychiatry training at Payne Whitney Clinic and completed postdoctoral training, at New York University and the University of California, San Francisco. He has focused his research program on leveraging molecular neuroscience tools to improve our understanding of psychiatric disorders. His current research has centered on plasticity factors –neurotrophic growth factors and endocannabinoids – which have profound effects on neuronal function within neural circuits. He and his collaborators at the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology have established vertically integrated research strategies to perform parallel genetic mouse model studies with human behavioral and functional imaging studies to identify how individual variation contribute to risk and resilience for mental illness and how clinical treatments can be optimized for individuals and targeted to the biological states of the developing brain.