UCLA Dr. Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Symposium in Precision Health
Precision Mental Health in Los Angeles and Beyond
Event Information
The UCLA Institute for Precision Health is hosting the 4th Annual Dr. Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Symposium on Precision Mental Health in Los Angeles and Beyond taking place January 23, 2026, at the UCLA Luskin Conference Center. This full-day event will showcase cutting-edge innovations in early detection of depression, personalized mental health therapies, and the integration of digital tools and wearable technologies in mental health research. Join us as leading experts and researchers explore how precision health is transforming the future of mental health care.
The event will feature expert speakers who will share their insights and research. Following the presentations, panel discussions will allow speakers to delve deeper into their respective topics.
All graduate students and postdoctoral fellows are encouraged to submit an abstract for the poster session.
Conor Liston, MD, PhD
Conor Liston, MD, PhD is a Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine. The long-term goals of his research program are to define basic mechanisms by which prefrontal cortical brain circuits support learning, memory, and motivation, and to understand how these functions are disrupted in depression, OCD, and other neuropsychiatric disorders. His team is also developing neuroimaging technologies for informing psychiatric diagnosis in human populations and predicting treatment response to transcranial magnetic stimulation and other forms of therapeutic neuromodulation. Full Bio...
Guillermo Sapiro, PhD
Speakers
Michelle Craske, PhD
Michelle G. Craske, PhD, is co-director of the UCLA Depression Grand Challenge. She pioneered the STAND system of care and oversees its execution in its capacities as DGC research as well as standalone treatment at UCLA and, from 2021-2023, East Los Angeles College. She also leads the UCLA STAND for Community Colleges Innovation Center. Craske’s research aligns closely with the Depression Grand Challenge’s aim to understand the causes of depression and develop more effective treatments for depression. She studies how environmental factors, biological factors and neurocircuitry influence the risk of developing anxiety and depression. She uses the information gathered from her research to develop more effective treatments that directly target these risk factors. Full Bio...
Lea Davis, PhD
Lea K. Davis, PhD is a Professor of AI and Human Health, Medicine, Psychiatry, and Genetics and Genomics. She is the contact-PI for the PsycheMERGE Network and the Scientific Director of the Mount Sinai Million Health Discoveries Program (MSMHDP), a flagship initiative of Mount Sinai that aims to enroll 1 million patients into an EHR-linked biobank that will serve as an engine of discovery for the Mount Sinai learning healthcare system. Full Bio...
Jonathan Flint, MD
Jonathan Flint has been a pioneer in the genetics of behaviour. He showed that behaviour, and psychiatric diseases are genetically tractable targets, and he has made key advances in identifying their molecular underpinnings, particularly with his work on structural variants. His genome-wide analyses of behaviour in rodents, precursors to GWAS in humans, revealed the polygenic architecture of behavior, arising from the joint action of many loci of small effect, a key insight for the design and interpretation of genetic studies in psychiatry. Full Bio...
Nelson Freimer, MD
Dr. Nelson Freimer is Director of UCLA’s Depression Grand Challenge, a campuswide initiative that aims to cut the burden of depression in half by 2050. He is Maggie G. Gilbert Endowed Chair, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Human Genetics, and Director of the Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics. He also directs the UCLA Neuroscience Genomics Core, Dr. Freimer received an M.D. degree from the Ohio State University, and completed residency training in psychiatry (at UC San Francisco) and a postdoctoral fellowship in human genetics (at Columbia University). He joined the UCLA faculty in 2000 after 10 years on the faculty at UC San Francisco. Full Bio...
Boris Heifets, MD, PhD
Dr. Boris Heifets is a neuroanesthesiologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University. He directs both clinical and basic neuroscience research programs, bridging neuroscience, psychiatry and anesthesiology. His research is focused on deconstructing the neural mechanisms involved in an emerging class of rapid-acting psychiatric therapies, like ketamine, MDMA, psilocybin and propofol. His group’s work is leading to new insights into the therapeutic potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness. Full Bio...
Loes Olde Loohuis, PhD
Loes Olde Loohuis is Assistant Professor-in-Residence in Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. Her research focuses on elucidating the underlying molecular mechanisms of severe mental illness, by utilizing and developing computational approaches to leverage multi-level data. Prior to joining UCLA as faculty she was a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA’s Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics, during which time she was awarded a K99/R00 award to identify electronic health record and genetic signatures that predict which patients with depression will develop bipolar disorder. Full Bio...
Robert Malenka, MD, PhD
Sophia Vinogradov, MD
I am the Donald W. Hastings Endowed Chair in Psychiatry and Department Head of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at the University of Minnesota (UMN) Medical School. Before joining UMN, I served as Vice Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and as Associate Chief of Staff for Mental Health at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Centre. I earned my MD at the Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit, Michigan. I further trained at the Palo Alto VA Medical Center and Stanford University, where I served as Chief Resident, followed by a fellowship in Psychiatric Neurosciences Research. Full Bio...