Research Fellowships and Training Programs

At Columbia, training the psychiatric researchers of the future is our highest priority. Columbia is a national leader in psychiatric research, and our research training opportunities reflect that. We offer a range of diverse NIMH funded post-graduate training fellowships in fields from translational neuroscience to global mental health. Our research trainees have access to mentorship from top researchers in psychiatry, psychology, and neuroscience, as well as to experts in research methodology and analytics. Research opportunities are also available for psychiatry residents and fellows, psychology interns, medical students, and undergraduates. Women and trainees from underrepresented minority groups are particularly welcome to apply.

Melissa Arbuckle, MD, PhD
Vice Chair for Education

Research Training Programs

Behavioral Sciences Research In HIV Infection

This program provides research training to prepare postdoctoral fellows for a career as independent NIH-funded researchers in behavioral HIV research to address the ongoing HIV pandemic. The program, in existence since 1989, trains persons with diverse disciplinary backgrounds (epidemiology, medicine, psychology, social work, sociology, law, etc.). During their 2- to 3-years tenure, trainees engage with their mentor in various research activities and participate in a broad range of activities to build their research and professional skills. The majority of graduates have public health-research careers inside and outside of academia.

Child Psychiatry Translational Research Fellowship

The NIMH–funded postdoctoral training fellowship in child psychiatry trains child psychiatrists, psychologists, and neuroscientists to conduct translational research in childhood psychiatric disorders. This work ranges from intervention studies in children or adolescents and neuroimaging research across development to basic science experiments to reveal the underpinnings of neurodevelopmental disorders or psychopathology.

Fellowship In Mood, Anxiety And Related Disorders

The goal of this program is to train MD, MD/PhD, and PhD fellows to develop careers as independent researchers in Affective, Anxiety and Related Disorders. An intensive program of writing, didactic instruction and, most of all, execution of research under the supervision of a mentor is described. Fellows will learn to identify key research questions, formulate hypotheses, and design and execute experiments that test those hypotheses. Fellows will also acquire skills necessary to do research, including expertise in experimental design and statistical analysis, understanding the administrative organization of a successful research enterprise, and most critically the preparation of grants to secure funding.

Fellowship In Schizophrenia Research

This fellowship focuses on research strategies, basic and clinical, related to schizophrenia and psychotic disorders. Supervised research, training in statistics and research methodology, and didactic seminars on schizophrenia comprise the two- to three-year program, which is supported by a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) grant.

Fellowship In Substance Abuse Disorders

The Division on Substance Use Disorders sponsors a two-year postdoctoral training program for clinical/translational research careers in substance use disorders. The fellowship has been continuously funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA T32) for nearly three decades and its alumni include a number of leading researchers and clinicians in addiction sciences around the country. This unique, integrated training program is designed for physician and other clinical scientists from a variety of disciplines, including human behavioral pharmacology, medication development, novel neuromodulatory approaches, biomarkers for predicting treatment response and pain assessment, clinical efficacy trials for behavioral, pharmacologic and neuromodulatory approaches, and implementation science.

Fellowship in Translational Neuroscience Research

This fellowship focuses on research strategies, basic and clinical, related to translational neuroscience research. It is aimed at training postdoctoral fellows for careers as independent researchers at the interface between neuroscience and psychiatry, as well as neurology. Supervised research, training in statistics and research methodology, and didactic seminars on neuroscience comprise the two-year program (and in some cases a three-year program), which is supported by a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) grant.

Research Training in Late-Life Neuropsychiatric Disorders

By the year 2030, there will be 65 million Americans over the age of 65 representing 22% of the population. In the same time period, the number of Americans 85 and older will more than double. As the population ages, the prevalence of late-life neuropsychiatric disorders will correspondingly increase. However, there is a shortage of clinical and basic researchers focused on psychiatric disorders in the elderly. The goal of this training program continues to be the development of career scientists with the knowledge base and expertise needed to conduct programmatic basic and/or clinical research in the neuropsychiatric disorders of late-life.

Global Mental Health Research Fellowship

The Columbia University Research Fellowship in GMH provides implementation science training to the next generation of GMH scientists with a two-fold focus: (1) The first is deployment-focused interventions research, in which fellows learn to develop interventions ready to be deployed in resource-poor areas. Adaptation of evidence-based interventions, with community collaboration, that directly address prevention, recognition, assessment, and treatment, will be followed by field-testing. (2) The second focus is intervention dissemination, implementation, and services research, through which fellows examine how mental health prevention, assessment, and treatment interventions can be translated for utilization in specific LMIC settings and study outcomes.

Janssen Fellowship In Translational Neuroscience Research

The Paul Janssen Fellowship is awarded to an outstanding young physician-investigator (MD or PhD degree) to conduct novel translational research in the field of neuroscience as it relates to psychiatric disease and medicine. The Paul Janssen Fellow will be assigned both a basic scientist mentor and a clinical investigator mentor from the faculty at Columbia University to serve as joint mentors. The fellow will take a basic observation made by the basic science mentor and apply it to the study of disease or treatment with the clinical research mentor.

Research Fellowship in Eating Disorders

This three-year post-doctoral fellowship program in Biobehavioral Disturbances of Eating Disorders trains MDs and PhDs for clinical research careers in eating disorders. Fellows participate in a vibrant research environment at Columbia University, where treatment development, cognitive neuroscience, eating behavior, and translational research studies are ongoing.

Research Training In Psychiatric Epidemiology

The mission of the Columbia University Psychiatric Epidemiology Training Program (PET) is to equip new generations of pre- and postdoctoral fellows with the skills and vision needed to conceptualize, measure, and test ideas about psychiatric disorders that will advance the field in both incremental and groundbreaking ways. To fulfill this mission, we emphasize a framework for investigating the etiology, course, and consequences of mental illness that highlights the dynamic interplay of multiple levels, that is, a person (biology, psychology), in context (family, social network, neighborhood, workplace, society) through time (person and contextual change).