Award Committee

ISAD President Dr Jair Soares is delighted to announce the ISAD Award winners.

Early Career Award

This award recognizes an individual who will be within ten years of their last professional degree and will have made exceptional contributions in one or more of the following categories: advocacy, clinical practice, knowledge translation or research in Mood Disorders

Our inaugural Early Career Award goes to Dr Sudhakar Selvaraj

Dr. Selvaraj is an exceptional clinician with an unmatched ability to build outstanding clinical programs. Since joining the department, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at McGovern Medical School, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston Dr. Selvaraj has assumed the management of the student health services. He has made such an outstanding impact on student health that the department has been able to expand offerings to include two psychologists as well as himself. In addition, he spearheaded the creation of a collaborative clinic with the department of obstetrics with the focus of perinatal and postpartum depression. He has been so successful with this endeavor that we are currently considering expanding the service with a second practitioner.

In addition to his clinical and administrative duties, Dr. Selvaraj has maintained an active research program. He has played a pivotal role in the formation of our treatment resistant depression research through his involvement in our deep brain stimulation clinical trial. In addition, he has launched two of his own research protocols with funding provided by seed grants from the University of Texas with great confidence that he will be able to success fully apply for federal funding utilizing data collected through these protocols.

Lifetime Achievement Award

This award honors an internationally recognized individual who has made exceptional contributions to advocacy, clinical practice, knowledge translation or research in Mood Disorders and whose lifetime of service deserves special recognition.

Our inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Professor Bernard Lerer

After his graduation from the University of Cape Town Medical School and training in psychiatry at Hadassah – Hebrew University Medical Center and Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem, Prof.Lerer completed a 2-year post-doctoral research fellowship at Lafayette Clinic in Detroit with Prof. Samuel Gershon. Since 1990, Prof. Lerer has headed the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory at Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center, Jerusalem. He has served the field as Director of the National Institute for Psychobiology in Israel from 1994-2002, Vice President of the CINP (1996-2000) and Founding Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology (1998-2008). He also founded and served as President of the Israel Society for Biological Psychiatry.  Colleagues in ISAD will know him as the Scientific Program Committee Chair for our meetings in Cape Town, Vancouver and London.
He has received several prestigious awards that testify to his internationally recognized contributions to our field both scientifically and as a renowned mentor and collaborating colleague.

Committee Membership

Chair: Professor Sidney Kennedy
Anthony Cleare
Ian Hickie
Kathleen Merikangas
Sagar Parikh
Paolo Brambilla
Eric Ruhe
Jair Soares
Jan Scott
Allan Young