The Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) has just announced a new chair, Joshua Gordon. This follows the pattern of the IACC chair being the same as the director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
Here is the announcement just sent out:
Joshua Gordon, M.D, Ph.D., who was appointed as the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH ) in September 2016, has been appointed as the new Chair of Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee. Prior to joining the NIH, Dr. Gordon served on the faculty of Columbia University’s Department of Psychiatry from 2014-2016, where he used his training in psychiatry and neuroscience to combine laboratory-based studies examining mouse models of human psychiatric illness with clinical practice and teaching in general psychiatry. His expertise in neurophysiology, or the study of patterns of electrical activity in the brain that underlie behavior, has allowed him to investigate features of the neural circuitry that underlies mental health conditions such as schizophrenia, anxiety, and depression. He earned his B.A. degree in Biology from Washington University in St. Louis, and his M.D./Ph.D. from the University of California at San Francisco. He did his residency and fellowship in Psychiatry at Columbia University/New York State Psychiatry Institute. While teaching and conducting research at Columbia University, he also directed Neuroscience Education for Columbia’s Psychiatric Residency Training Program. Dr. Gordon has received several awards and grants for his research, including an IMHRO Rising Star Award, two NARSAD Young Investigator awards, an APA-GlaxoSmithKline Young Faculty award, and research grants from the National Institute of Mental Health. In his role as NIMH Director, Dr. Gordon oversees the lead federal agency for research on mental health disorders and conditions. With an annual budget of approximately $1.5 billion, NIMH supports more than 2,000 mental health and neuroscience-related research grants and contracts at universities and other institutions across the country and overseas. In addition, the NIMH intramural research program supports approximately 300 scientists who work in laboratories at NIH. The mission of the NIMH is to transform the understanding and treatment of mental illnesses through basic and clinical research, paving the way for prevention, recovery and cure.
