VIPBG News

By Elizabeth Long

Michael Neale, Ph.D., a professor of psychiatry in the School of Medicine, received the Distinguished Scholarship Award. He has dedicated his research to making connections between how genetic, environmental and behavioral factors interact and contribute to illnesses such as substance abuse and psychiatric disorders.

Michael Neale created an open-source computer program widely used by researchers in modeling data to determine whether genetic variants are linked to outcome variables. The program has been cited more than 3,000 times in scientific literature.

“I hope these tools will be further developed by future generations of researchers.”

“At any point in history, it [has been] a great privilege to work as an independent scientist tackling major health and social problems facing our species and planet,” he said.

In addition to his remarkable level of productivity, Dr. Neale is also an outstanding teacher and mentor at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics. It is estimated that over 2,000 researchers in his field have been trained by Dr. Neale … significantly influencing the next generation of genetics researchers.