Yale Psychiatrist Receives NIMH Merit Award

The National Institute of Mental Health has granted a MERIT award to Godfrey Pearlson, M.D., professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, for his research on structural and functional brain abnormalities associated with schizophrenia.

The project involves psychiatric researchers at Yale and at Hartford Hospital’s Institute of Living, where, in addition to his appointment at Yale, Pearlson is director of the Olin Neuropsychiatry Research Center.

MERIT Awards provide long-term support to investigators with impressive records of scientific achievement and superior competence and productivity in research areas of special importance or promise. Less than five percent of funded National Institutes of Health investigators are selected to receive MERIT Awards.

The principal feature of the program is the opportunity for such investigators to gain up to 10 years of grant support. The MERIT Awards are intended to provide such investigators with long-term, stable support to foster their continued creativity and spare them some of the administrative burdens associated with frequent preparation and submission of research grant applications.