January 26, 2005

Dilip Jeste Selected For Prestigious Psychiatry Award

By Sue Pondrom

Dr. Dilip V. Jeste, Estelle and Edgar Levi Chair in Aging and professor of psychiatry and neurosciences at the UCSD School of Medicine, has been selected as a co-recipient of the American Psychiatric Association’s 2005 Research Award, the association’s oldest and most prestigious research award presented in recognition of notable and distinguished career contributions.

A medical specialist and internationally known researcher in geriatric psychiatry, Jeste is chief of the UCSD Division of Geriatric Psychiatry, director of the UCSD Sam and Rose Stein Institute for Research on Aging (SIRA), and a geriatric psychiatrist with the VA San Diego Healthcare System. He will receive a $2,500 award and honorary plaque at the APA Annual Meeting May 23 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Dilip Jeste, M.D.

Jeste is the principal investigator of numerous research and training grants, and director of the Advanced Center for Interventions and Services Research at UCSD, focusing on psychosis in late-life and funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). He is also principal investigator for the Center for Community-based Research in Older People with Psychoses, a $7.5 million program funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH). The program is a unique collaboration between UCSD and the San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency’s Adult and Older Adult Mental Health Services (AMHS) to develop effective new therapies for middle-aged and elderly people with schizophrenia and other chronic psychotic disorders.

The author of six books and more than 400 articles in peer-reviewed journals and books, Jeste is editor of the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. He is the past president of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry (AAGP) and the West Coast College of Biological Psychiatry (WCCBP), and the founding president of the International College of Geriatric Psychoneuropharmacology. Jeste has been listed in “The Best Doctors in America” and has received numerous awards.

Only three other UCSD professors of psychiatry have been recipients of the APA Research Award: J. Christian Gillin, M.D., who received the award posthumously for his sleep research; Marc Schuckit, M.D., an expert in studies of alcoholism and genetics; and Ming Tsuang, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc., one of the world’s top researchers in human genetics, behavior and neuropsychiatric diseases, who received the award while at Harvard University.

The co-recipient of the APA 2005 Research Award is Herbert Meltzer from Vanderbilt University, a psychopharmacology researcher.

Media Contact: Sue Pondrom (619) 543-6163