Dolores Malaspina

Dolores Malaspina is professor of psychiatry, neuroscience, and genetics and genomic sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where she directs the system-wide psychosis program. Malaspina was previously chair of psychiatry at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Her research focuses on the genetic and environmental underpinnings of human mental illness. Malaspina has authored 350 papers and received numerous awards, including a National Institutes of Health Challenge Grant. She was first to propose and demonstrate that advancing paternal age is a primary determinant of the risk for schizophrenia through de novo mutations. More recently, she showed that hippocampal inflammation in psychosis is linked to vagal hypofunction and the gut-brain axis. Malaspina serves on the steering committee for psychiatric diagnoses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for the American Psychiatric Association. (Mount Sinai is a 2023 Festival Underwriter)​