The success Upstate’s Psychiatry Department inaugural Research Day this last month has sparked plans to make the activity an annual event every fall so students, trainees, and faculty have a platform to showcase their latest research and scholarly activity, along with a opportunity for networking and collaboration.

"We have so many strengths in our department and much research is being done not only in our research division but also in our clinical divisions,” says Nevena Radonjic, MD/PhD, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and an organizer of Psychiatry Research Day. "This is a great opportunity for everybody to come together, learn about each other's projects and interests, and see how to collaborate in the future.”

Collaboration is a key benefit to events like Research Day. Distinguished Professor Wei-Dong Yao, PhD, is using the event to gain a better understanding of psychiatric research being done from the clinical side of Upstate.

“There’s a gap between the faculty research labs and the clinical divisions,” explained Yao, who also serves as vice chair of research of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. He said the day or research offers forum to connect with clinicians.  “It’s nice to see their presentations and data; I think having a better understanding of their research will help us in basic science ask more clinically relevant questions.”

Radonjic and Yao have seen Upstate’s psychiatry program grow over the past decade and are excited to see the current trajectory continue.

“We are certainly seeing a lot of need for growth, given the clinical demands,” explained Radonjic. “We've seen our researchers do an exemplary job in response to COVID and meeting the community's needs.”

Yao has seen the psychiatry department almost double in recent years and sees them expanding into new fields like artificial intelligence, genomics, and computational neuroscience.

“We have a robust presence of data scientists, one of the strongest in the country,” he said. “Combining that with what we do in basic mechanistic sciences, I see a lot of potential. We can depend on their data to develop new questions and hypotheses, and we can design mechanistic experiments to test these hypotheses and ideas.” 

For more about the work being done by Upstate’s psychiatry department here.

Caption: Upstate's Psychiatry Research Day draws a crowd in the atrium of the Institute for Human Performance.