The Stanley Center Sklar Program

The Sklar Program is designed to strengthen the connections between local clinical psychiatry communities and researchers at the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research as we tackle severe mental illnesses together.

Sklar Banner

Goals of the program

Translation of continuously evolving research findings into routine clinical practice is critical for improving standards of care. This requires effective communication between researchers and clinicians. Barriers to this process exist due to a disconnect between researchers as knowledge producers and clinicians as knowledge users.

The Stanley Center Sklar Program addresses these barriers by:

Increasing the number of physician scientists engaged in psychiatry research
Improving relationships between local clinicians and researchers, fostering more cross talk and collaborations, and thereby improving research quality
Building a network of clinicians and scientists working on psychiatric research in the Boston area

List of program offerings

The Stanley Center Sklar Program fosters collaboration between clinicians and researchers from early on by offering undergraduate students, psychiatry medical students, and psychiatry residents opportunities to conduct research during their academic and clinical training. Selected students and residents are matched to Stanley Center laboratories to conduct research with a focus on schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Additionally, the program is building a collaborative network — the Sklar Alumni Network — to continue those collaborations and relationships and to establish a local and national community of clinician scientists and clinically-educated researchers to improve the standard of care in serious mental illness.

The Sklar Program offers:

The Sklar BSRP Fellowship for undergraduate students committed to biomedical research in the area of neurobiology and psychiatry.
The Sklar Research Award for psychiatry residents in the Physician Scientist Training Program (PSTP) at McLean/MGH Hospital and in the Brigham and Women's Hospital (HMS) Psychiatry Residency Program.
The Sklar Alumni Network which engages past Sklar students and fellows as they continue their careers, building a nationwide network of clinician scientists.

How to apply

Undergraduate students may apply for the Sklar BSRP Fellowship through the ӳ��ý's ӳ��ý Summer Research Program (BSRP). Undergraduate program details are available here.

Current psychiatry residents in the Physician Scientist Training Program (PSTP) at MGH/McLean Hospital or residents in the research track of the BWH/HMS Psychiatry Residency Program (PRP) who wish to apply for a Sklar Research Award should contact their program director. Additional details are available here.

Pamela Sklar, presenting

About Pamela Sklar

The Sklar Program is dedicated to Pamela Sklar, a pioneer in psychiatric genomics who played an instrumental role in the early history of the ӳ��ý and in establishing the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research. Her gene discovery research led to some of the first statistically meaningful gene identifications in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The Stanley Center created the Sklar Program to honor Pam’s legacy by supporting clinically-trained scientists working on the genetics and molecular biology of schizophrenia and bipolar disorders, with the goal of improving lives.

FAQ

What is the Stanley Center ?

The Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at ӳ��ý of MIT and Harvard was launched in 2007 with transformative support from the philanthropists Ted and Vada Stanley. The commitment — the largest ever made for psychiatric research — was made to support researchers affiliated with the center and was aimed at “enhancing scientific research on psychiatric disorders with the hopes of leading to a breakthrough in new treatments.”
The mission of the Stanley Center is to reduce the burden of serious mental illness through research, focused on schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and autism spectrum disorders—very severe conditions that, globally, affect millions of patients.

Which Stanley Center labs participate in the Sklar Program?