The Directors

Martin B. Keller, M.D
Department Chair

Dr.Keller is the Mary E. Zucker Professor and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the Brown University School of Medicine. He is also Executive Psychiatrist-in-Chief at the seven Brown University affiliated hospitals. Dr. Keller received his medical training at Cornell University, and completed a medical internship at Bellevue Medical Center in New York City and a psychiatric residency at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

His research interests include investigation of nosology and long-term course of psychiatric illnesses, including mood disorders, anxiety disorders and eating disorders, and the effect of treatment of neuropsychopharmacologic compounds and psychotherapy on the short-and long-term clinical course of these illnesses in children, adolescents and adults. One of his methodological contributions to the field has been the creation of the Longitudinal Interval Follow-Up Evaluation (LIFE) which assesses psychopathology in detail over long periods of time. The LIFE and its many derivations have been used by other scientists in over 250 research programs in the USA and internationally.

Dr. Keller has received over 20 research grants from the National Institute of Health and numerous grants from research foundations and pharmaceutical industry. He serves on numerous professional committees and editorial boards, published over 240 articles for peer-reviewed journals, and has been the recipient of several prestigious awards in recognition of making major contributions to the understanding and treatment of mood disorders. The most recent honor he received is the 2001 American College of Psychiatrists (ACP) Mood Disorders Lifetime Research Award which he received in February, 2001.

 

Jane Eisen, M.D.
Residency Training Director

After graduating from Barnard College, Dr. Eisen went on to earn her medical degree from New York University School of Medicine, followed by residency training in psychiatry at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. After a stint on the faculty at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Dr. Eisen joined Brown’s Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior in 1989. It was at the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) Clinic at the Butler Hospital, under the mentorship of Professor Steven A. Rasmussen, that Dr. Eisen developed both clinical and research expertise in this area of study. A distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Eisen currently serves as co-investigator on an NIMH-funded, 10-year study of the course of illness in OCD. Dr. Eisen is also investigating the relationship between OCD and other psychiatric disorders.

Although always engaged in clinical research, Dr. Eisen has also excelled in the medical education arena, wherein she has held key leadership positions including director of the core clerkship in psychiatry; associate director of the residency training program in psychiatry; and director of medical student education for the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior. Currently Dr. Eisen serves as Director of the Brown Psychiatry Residency, a position she has held since 2001. She is also co-director of the combined residency training program in pediatrics, general psychiatry,and child/adolescent psychiatry, the combined residency training program in neurology-psychiatry; and the residency training program in geriatric psychiatry. More recently, Dr. Eisen served as the acting chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior from October 2005 to April 2006.

In addition to her current role at Training Director for the Psychiatry Residency at Brown, Dr. Eisen serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty in the BioMed Division of Brown University. In this role, Dr. Eisen is responsible for the management of the office of Biomedical Faculty Affairs and for all faculty actions relevant to hospital- and community-based physician faculty.

 

Bob Boland, M.D.
Associate Training Director

Dr. Robert Boland is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University.  He trained at the Georgetown University School of Medicine (medical school and fellowship in Psychosomatic Medicine) and the Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut (Residency), before joining the Department of Psychiatry at Brown University in 1992, taking a position as Associate Director of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry at Miriam Hospital.  There, he pursued his interest in the interface between medicine and psychiatry, conducting research with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the natural course of psychiatric disorders in woman with HIV.  In addition to Psychosomatic Medicine, Dr. Boland is Board Certified in Geriatric Psychiatry,

Over time, Dr. Boland became interested in teaching and pedagogy.  Chosen in 1997 to be the primary lecturer the medical school’s Introduction to Psychiatry course, he became course director the next year.  Soon after he became the Associate Training Director for the Geriatric Fellowship, and in 2003 he took on the roles of Associate Training Director for the Residency in Psychiatry, and Clerkship Director for Psychiatry; currently he devotes a majority of his time to these educational roles.  He is the recipient of numerous awards for his teaching.

Outside of Brown, Dr. Boland is involved in a number of organizations devoted to education and Psychiatry:  he is an Officer of the Association for Academic Psychiatry, a Councilor for the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine, and serves on the Board of the American Association of Directors of Residency Training.  In addition, he is a Consultant for the Scientific Program Committee of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), and for the National Institutes of Health’s Center for Scientific Review.  He is on the Editorial Board for the journal Psychosomatics, has been guest editor for the journal Academic Medicine, and a reviewer for many scientific journals. In addition, he has served on the Editorial Boards for the USMLE, the American College of Psychiatry’s PRITE Examination Committee, the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology’s (ABPN) Psychosomatic Examination Committee, and has been an examiner for the ABPN's Part II Oral examination since 2003.

Dr. Boland has a particular interest in the area of teaching with technology:  he has received a number of grants to develop teaching applications and has written and presented widely on this subject.  Currently he chairs the Information Committees and/or Technology committees for several national organizations, including those mentioned above, and served as a consultant to the APA Summit on Medical Student Education’s Task Force on Informatics and Technology.

 

Katharine Phillips M.D.,
Director of Research in Residency Training

 

Dr. Katharine Phillips is Director of Residency Training for Research, and Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior. She graduated from Dartmouth College and Dartmouth Medical School, and completed her psychiatry residency at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Phillips oversees residents’ research experiences and the research track. Her goal is to optimize and enrich research experiences for any resident interested in doing research during their training. This involves advising and mentoring residents on their projects and career development issues, helping residents identify strong research mentors in their area of interest, overseeing a research elective and a research seminar for interested residents, developing new research opportunities for trainees, and other activities.

During her career, Dr. Phillips has provided research mentoring to more than 60 beginning researchers, including residents, medical students, undergraduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and junior faculty. She is a faculty member for Brown University’s post-doctoral training grant (T32) on treatment research, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Phillips also participates in research mentoring activities sponsored by the American Psychiatric Association and the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. In 2002 and 2007, she received the Brown Department of Psychiatry’s Research Mentor Award.

Dr. Phillips is an internationally recognized researcher on body dysmorphic disorder, and has also done research on obsessive compulsive disorder, other anxiety disorders, and personality disorders. She has been the principal investigator of many research grants, including grants funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. She has more than 200 scientific publications and lectures frequently. Dr. Phillips has received numerous honors and awards for her research and other contributions to psychiatry, including a Special Presidential Commendation from the American Psychiatric Association for her research accomplishments.

From 2002 to 2006, Dr. Phillips chaired the National Institute of Mental Health's Interventions Research Review Committee (Initial Review Group). She is a member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology’s Public Information Committee, the DSM-V Task Force, the Board of Directors of American Psychiatric Publishing, and numerous editorial boards.

 

Diana Elliott Lidofsky, Ph.D

Director of Psychotherapy in Residency Training

 

After graduating from Harvard College, Dr. Lidofsky earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Adelphi University’s Institute for Advanced Psychological Studies. She went on to an internship and fellowship in Adult Clinical Psychology at The Albert Einstein College of Medicine before moving to Providence. Although initially psychoanalytically- oriented in her training, Dr. Lidofsky’s interest in many different schools of psychotherapy spans the spectrum from behavioral to psychodynamic treatments. Her academic interests focus on understanding the commonalities which characterize different psychotherapeutic modalities.

Dr. Lidofsky joined the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior almost twenty years ago, and during that time she has devoted herself to teaching residents about psychotherapy, and to supervising residents’ work in psychotherapy. Since assuming the position of Director of Psychotherapy Training, Dr. Lidofsky has been instrumental in further developing the psychotherapy curriculum, and in coordinating didactic and supervisory components of the program. She currently teaches the full-year seminar for residents at the PG-3 level on the theory and practice of psychodynamic psychotherapy, as well as a full-year seminar in case conference format for the PG-4 residents. Dr. Lidofsky’s commitment to teaching has been recognized by teaching awards from both the residents and from the Medical School.

In addition to her role in the Department, Dr. Lidofsky maintains a private practice in Providence, and serves on the board of the Rhode Island Association of Psychoanalytic Psychologies.

 

 

 

Rita Misek
Residency Coordinator

Ms. Misek is the Residency Coordinator. She can be reached via email at psychiatry_residency@brown.edu or by calling her at 401-455-6375

 

Esther Escotto
Administrative Assistant

Ms. Escotto is the Administrative Assistant for the General Psychiatry Residency. She can be reached at by emailing her at esther_escotto@brown.edu or by calling her at 401-455-6417