Team Member Spotlight Series: Nelson Freimer, MD

Nelson Freimer, MD

Director, UCLA Depression Grand Challenge
Maggie G. Gilbert Endowed Chair in Bipolar Disorders
Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Director, UCLA Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics
Associate Director for Research
Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA

Research Focus 

Dr. Nelson Freimer is known for his extensive research using large-scale genomic methods to identify the genetic basis of complex traits. He is a leading expert on neurobehavioral disorders. He founded the Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics in 2000, one of the world’s premier research units focused on discovering the genetic contribution to diseases of brain and behavior.

DGC Connection

Nelson Freimer is the leader of the UCLA Depression Grand Challenge (DGC), providing vision and leadership for this camp-wide endeavor. Fundamental to the DGC’s efforts to transform our understanding and treatment of depression, Dr. Freimer has a career-long focus on developing and deploying increasingly precise methods to diagnose and track the course of depression and bipolar disorder. The DGC includes faculty members, trainees, and staff from across the campus, and partners from around the world, to achieve the DGC’s ambitious objective of cutting the burden of depression in half by 2050.

“Support research because we need to understand depression better if we’re going to get to the point, which I believe we will reach, where no one has to lose their lives to suicide.”

 

– Nelson Freimer, MD
Director, UCLA Depression Grand Challenge

Learn more about the UCLA Depression Grand Challenge Team Member Spotlight Series.