Wayne Drevets, M.D.
Director and President of Laureate Insitute for Brain Research, Oklahoma University College of Medicine. Oxley Professor of Neuroscience Research at Oklahoma University College of Medicine
Wayne C. Drevets, M.D. is the Director and President of the Laureate Institute for Brain Research (LIBR), and the Oxley Professor of Neuroscience Research at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry in Tulsa. Dr. Drevets received a B.S. (Biology) degree from Wheaton College and an M.D. degree from the University of Kansas, and completed residency training in psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine (St. Louis). He then joined the Washington University Department of Psychiatry faculty, ultimately attaining the rank of tenured Associate Professor. During these years he conducted positron emission tomography (PET) imaging studies of mood and anxiety disorders under the mentorship of Dr. Marcus Raichle. He subsequently moved to the University of Pittsburgh, where he acquired additional training in the application of PET to neuroreceptor imaging. In 2001, Dr. Drevets joined the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program as Chief of the Section on Neuroimaging in Mood and Anxiety Disorders, and in 2008 he additionally became Acting Chief of the NIMH Laboratory on Molecular Pathophysiology. In 2009 Dr. Drevets joined the newly formed LIBR, established by support from the William K. Warren Foundation, to lead a multidisciplinary team that is aquiring neuroimaging, biochemical, genetic and clinical data to investigate the interrelationships between biomarkers, genotype, illness course, and treatment outcome in mood disorders.
Dr. Drevets has published about 200 articles and chapters that have been cumulatively cited more than 10,000 times in the scientific literature. His research has been funded by project and career development grants from the National Institute for Mental Health, the W.K. Warren Foundation and other private foundations. Dr. Drevets is a past recipient of Young Investigator and Independent Investigator Awards from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD), and is listed in the Best Doctors in America. He is a Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, and a Member of the Society for Neuroscience and the Society for Biological Psychiatry.
He serves on the Editorial Board for the journal, Biology of Mood and Anxiety Disorders, and on the Scientific Boards for NARSAD, the MRC Behavioral & Clinical Neuroscience Centre at Cambridge University, and the ORWH-NIMH SCOR: Center for Sex Differences in Depression at Harvard Medical School. Major themes of Dr. Drevets studies have involved: 1) characterizing the pathophysiology of mood disorders; 2) delineating neural circuits in which dysfunction leads to development of abnormal mood episodes; 3) elucidating effects of genetic variants associated with the risk for mood disorders on neural function, structure and receptor pharmacology; 4) investigating the neural mechanisms of antidepressant and mood stabilizing treatments, and 5) developing novel therapeutics for depression.