The Elizabeth Young New Investigator Symposium

A high point at OSSD annual meetings is the Elizabeth Young New Investigator Symposium, at which several young investigators (graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, or residents) are invited to present their research and receive an award in Dr. Young's honor.

Dr. Elizabeth Young (1949-2009) was a member if the SWHR Isis Network on Sex, Gender, Drugs, and the Brain and a founding member of OSSD. She was an internationally renowned biological psychiatrist and neuroendocrinologist. She conducted seminal work on stress biology and its role in severe depression and other mood disorders with a particular emphasis on sex differences.

Dr. Young received her undergraduate education at the University of Dayton in Ohio. She earned her medical degree from the Ohio State University in 1976, and completed her residency in Psychiatry at the same institution in 1979. Elizabeth joined the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School in 1983 where she moved through the ranks to become Professor of Psychiatry and Senior Research Professor at the Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute (MBNI).

Dr. Young was the quintessential translational physician scientist - a role she fashioned for herself before its critical importance was widely appreciated. Early in her career, she conducted fundamental research on the biology of endorphins and on the regulation of the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis by stress. Simultaneously, she undertook groundbreaking studies on the dysregulation of the stress system in major depression. Her body of work stands as one of the most systematic and mechanistic analyses of the biology of mood disorders in modern psychiatry.