Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Joseph T. Coyle, M.D. holds the Eben S. Draper Chair of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at Harvard Medical School. From 1991 to 2001, he served as Chairman of the Consolidated Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, which included the nine hospital programs of psychiatry affiliated with the Medical School. After graduating from Holy Cross College, he received his medical degree (M.D.) from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1969. Following an internship in Pediatrics, he spent three years at the National Institutes of Health as a research fellow in the laboratory of Nobel laureate Julius Axelrod, Ph.D. He returned to Hopkins in 1973 to complete his Psychiatric residency, in which he is board certified, and joined the faculty in 1975. In 1980, he was promoted to Professor of Neuroscience, Pharmacology and Psychiatry; and in 1982 he assumed the Directorship of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, being named the Distinguished Service Professor in 1985.

Dr. Coyle's research interests include developmental neurobiology, mechanisms of neuronal vulnerability and psychopharmacology. In particular, he has carried out research on the role of glutamatergic neurons in the pathophysiology of neuropsychiatric disorders for 30 years. He has a long commitment to training. In the mid-1980s, he was the PI of a NIMH Training Grant that had a core curriculum, which introduced PhD fellows to psychiatric illnesses with patient demonstrations. While President of the Society of Neuroscience, he worked with NIMH to develop a minority Training Grant. For the last 10 years, he has served as co-PI on this grant, which was the foundation for minority mentoring and net-working for the Society. He has published over 500 scientific articles and has edited seven books. His research has been cited over 35,000 times, and his H-factor is 93. He has received continuous NIH funding for his research for 30 years and is the Director of an NIMH Conte Center on the Neurobiology of Schizophrenia (2001-11).

Dr. Coyle is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences (1990), a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1993), a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, a fellow of the American College of Psychiatry and fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He served on the National Advisory Mental Health Council for the National Institute of Mental Health (1990-94). He is Past-President of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (2001) and Past-President (1991) of the Society for Neuroscience, an organization with more than 35,000 members. He sits on over 20 journal editorial boards including JAMA and is the Editor-in-Chief of the Archives of General Psychiatry, the most highly cited journal in the field (citation impact:15.98).