Steven Siegel, MD, PhD, has joined the Keck School of Medicine of USC as chair of the Department of Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences.

Steven Siegel

He was selected after a rigorous national search and joined the Keck School on July 1, according to Keck School Interim Dean Rohit Varma, MD, MPH, and Keck Medicine of USC Senior Vice President and CEO Thomas Jackiewicz, MPH.

Siegel is a practicing psychiatrist specializing in the treatment of schizophrenia and psychosis. He has authored more than 130 manuscripts on a variety of topics relating to schizophrenia and autism and is a physician-scientist, contributing to the investigation of the basic neurobiology of schizophrenia, autism, drug abuse and nicotine dependence.

Siegel previously spent 20 years at the University of Pennsylvania where he was a professor of psychiatry and biomedical engineering, director of the Translational Neuroscience Program in the Department of Psychiatry, director of the Clinical Neurosciences Training Program, and associate director of the CTSA education programs. He held faculty appointments at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, served as attending physician at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, and was director of the Clinical Neuroscience Training Program.

Siegel has received numerous awards, including being named one of the nation’s outstanding clinicians by the National Association for Mental Illness; the Leonard Berwick Memorial Teaching Award, which is among Penn’s highest awards for the teaching of translational research; and the Martin P. Szuba Award for Excellence in Clinical Teaching and Research by the Department of Psychiatry at Penn. He holds MD and PhD degrees in neurobiology from Mount Sinai School of Medicine and a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience from Colgate University.

Varma and Jackiewicz thanked David Baron, DO, for serving as interim chair in the Department of Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences since July 2015 and described Baron’s leadership of the department’s clinical, research and educational missions and his work on faculty development as exemplary and invaluable.

Members of the search advisory committee, chaired by Helena Chui, MD, professor and chair of the Department of Neurology, were: Glenn Ault, MD, senior associate dean, Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center; Thomas Buchanan, MD, vice dean for research; Dan Castillo, chief executive officer, LAC+USC; Judy Garner, PhD, vice dean, Faculty Affairs; Rod Hanners, chief executive officer, Keck Medical Center of USC and chief operating officer, Keck Medicine of USC; Talene Keshishian, MD, resident PGY3; James Knowles, MD, professor of psychiatry; Isabel Lagomasino, MD, director, Psychiatry Residency Program; Lawrence Opas, MD, associate dean, Graduate Medical Education, LAC+USC; Bradley Peterson, MD, professor of pediatrics and psychiatry; Edmond H. Pi, MD, professor emeritus of Clinical Psychiatry; Janet Pine, MD, associate professor of psychiatry; Erica Shoemaker, MD, director, Child & Adolescent Psychiatry; Brad Spellberg, MD, chief medical officer, LAC+USC; Arthur Toga, PhD, director, USC Mark & Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute; Hal Yee, MD, chief medical officer, Los Angeles Department of Health Services; Danit Bar Ziv, MD, resident, PGY3; and Berislav Zlokovic, MD, PhD, director, Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute.