Gabriel de Erausquin, M.D., Ph.D.

2016 Simon Bolivar Award Recipient

Lecture Title: The Person in Personalized Medicine: Lessons from the IMAGES Study

Dr. de Erausquin was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and received his medical degree and a Ph.D. in behavioral pharmacology at the Universidad De Buenos Aires. He completed residency training in psychiatry at Yale University and in neurology at the Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis. Dr. de Erausquin has served on the faculty of the Washington University School of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and the University of South Florida. Since the Fall of 2015, he is professor and founding chair, M.D., Ph.D., of the Department of Psychiatry and Neurology and head of the Division of Neurosciences at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine. Dr. de Erausquin’s current research focuses on the mechanism of susceptibility of embryonic dopaminergic neurons to cell death during the second trimester of intrauterine development, which may result in loss of a critical subpopulation of neurons forming the mesocortical projection, a connection system whose lesion could explain many of the symptoms of schizophrenia. His research on the genetics of schizophrenia earned him the Klerman Award for Clinical Psychiatry Research from the Brain and Behavior Foundation.