Steven Hyman


Steven E. Hyman is Director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research and a member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He is also Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology. Hyman was Provost of Harvard University from 2001 to 2011. As Provost, he was instrumental in the development of cross school and regional interdisciplinary initiatives, especially in the sciences. In 2009 he initiated an extensive process of reform of the Harvard libraries, and he paved the way for the creation of an open access mandate at Harvard.

Early life

Hyman graduated from Teaneck High School in Teaneck, New Jersey in 1970. He received his B.A. from Yale College; an M.A. from the University of Cambridge, which he attended as a Mellon fellow studying the history and philosophy of science; and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. After an internship in medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, a residency in psychiatry at McLean Hospital, and a clinical fellowship in neurology at MGH, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard in molecular biology.

Career

From 1996 to 2001 Hyman was the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, one of the National Institutes of Health, a group of agencies that fund and perform biomedical research. NIMH supports neuroscience and the knowledge needed to understand, diagnose, and treat brain disorders. He has worked, more recently to open psychiatric classifications, including the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the International Classification of Diseases, Mental and Behavioral Disorders to fundamental rethinking including the incorporation of neuroscience and genetics the recognition that many mental disorders are quantitative deviations from health rather than categorically different.
Hyman is a Past-President of the Society for Neuroscience which has approximately 40,000 members. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the US National Academies where he serves on the governing Council, is a member of the board of health science policy and chairs the Forum on Neuroscience, which brings together government, industry, academia, and NGOs. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He is a founder member of the International Neuroethics Society, serving as the first President of the Society from 2006 to 2014.