Rate My Professor Ran Barzilay

Ran Barzilay, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and an attending child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He serves as Director of the PROSPER Center in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at CHOP and is a research scientist at the Lifespan Brain Institute. Dr. Barzilay earned a BSc in Preclinical M.D. Studies from Tel Aviv University in 2004, a PhD in Neuroscience from Tel Aviv University in 2008, and an MD from Tel Aviv University in 2011. He completed a medical internship at Beilinson Hospital, Rabin Medical Center, Israel, from 2011 to 2012, followed by residency training in child and adolescent psychiatry at Geha Mental Health Center, Israel, from 2012 to 2017.

Dr. Barzilay's research focuses on mechanisms driving variability in brain and behavior development among youths exposed to environmental stress, with particular emphasis on risk and resilience factors related to youth suicidal behavior and the interplay of the exposome with genetic, epigenetic, and immune factors. His work integrates large-scale multimodal datasets to examine gene-environment interactions and has contributed to understanding trauma, neighborhood environment, and developmental effects on psychopathology. He has received numerous awards and honors, including the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology Travel Award in 2018, the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology Fellowship Award in 2014, and multiple travel fellowships and poster awards from organizations such as the Society of Biological Psychiatry and the Schizophrenia International Research Society. Dr. Barzilay serves as a peer reviewer for journals including JAMA Psychiatry, Biological Psychiatry, The Lancet Psychiatry, and Neuropsychopharmacology. Key publications include studies on the association between traumatic stress load and psychopathology in the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort (Psychological Medicine, 2019), resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic (Translational Psychiatry, 2020), and deconstructing the role of the exposome in youth suicidal ideation (Neurobiology of Stress, 2021).