Kerry J. Ressler, MD, PhD, is the James and Patricia Poitras Chair in Psychiatry, and Chief of the Division of Depression and Anxiety Disorders at McLean Hospital, and Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in molecular biology from M.I.T., and his M.D./Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School. In 1992 at Harvard, he was the first student of Dr. Linda Buck (Nobel Prize, 2004), helping to identify the molecular organization of the olfactory receptor system, and he has spent his career using molecular tools to understand systems neuroscience approaches to emotion and behavior. Prior to moving to McLean in 2015, he spent 18 years at Emory University and Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, where he founded the Grady Trauma Project, a study focused on understanding the Psychology, Biology, and Trauma-Related factors contributing to intergenerational cycles of trauma exposure and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Substance Abuse and Depression in over 13,000 participants from urban Atlanta. This cohort became a core group for the initiation of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium – PTSD workgroup, which has now amassed >200,000 samples worldwide for understanding the genetic architecture of PTSD. Additionally, for 20 years he has lead a lab using cutting-edge tools to study molecular, cellular, pharmacological and circuit mechanisms in mouse models that underlie threat and fear-related disorders. Dr. Ressler is a previous Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a current member of the National Academy of Medicine. He was also the 2017 President of the US Society for Biological Psychiatry, and has served on the Councils for the Society of Biological Psychiatry, the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, and the NIMH Intramural Program. His work focuses on translational research bridging molecular neurobiology in animal models with human genetic and epigenetic research on emotion, particularly fear