Stephan Heckers, MD, will step down as chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Nashville, Tenn.-based Vanderbilt University Medical Center at the end of the academic year.
Dr. Heckers, the William P. and Henry B. Test chair in schizophrenia research and the Donald and Charlotte Test clinical directorship in psychosis programs, joined Vanderbilt from Boston-based Harvard Medical School in 2006, according to a Dec. 9 news release. He is the system’s longest-serving clinical department chair and will continue leading the Vanderbilt early psychosis program and conducting research.
During his leadership, the department’s National Institutes of Health research ranking rose from No. 46 in 2006 to No. 22 in 2022, with annual research funding growing from $6.7 million to $23.1 million. Dr. Heckers has published 220 peer-reviewed papers and served as editor-in-chief of JAMA Psychiatry.
