Krystal, Randall named 2020 Royer Award recipients

By Nicholas Roznovsky
 

School of Medicine Dean Talmadge E. King, Jr., MD, announced today that Andrew D. Krystal, MD, MS, and Robin Randall, MD, MPH, have been selected as the recipients of the 2020 J. Elliot Royer Award in Psychiatry. The honor, which includes a substantial cash prize, is awarded to two psychiatrists every other year—an academic psychiatrist and a community-based practitioner. Both will be formally presented with their awards later this fall.

The awards established in 1962 by late Oakland physician J. Elliot Royer, MD, as a bequest in his will to recognize those active in the medical field in San Francisco, Alameda, or Contra Costa counties that have made the most significant contribution to the advancement of psychiatry or neurology during the year. His will specified the eligibility criteria, selection process, and amount of the annual award, which alternates each year between neurology and psychiatry. Originally awarded to a single individual each cycle, the award was expanded in 2000 to recognize both an academic psychiatrist and a community-based practitioner who have made high-impact scholarly and creative contributions to the field.

Royer Award for Excellence in Academic Psychiatry

The Royer Award for Excellence in Academic Psychiatry will be awarded to Ray and Dagmar Dolby Distinguished Professor in Psychiatry and department's Vice Chair for Research Andrew Krystal, MD, MS. Krystal, who joined UCSF in June 2016 after many years at Duke University, has a long track record of making high-impact scholarly contributions to the field of psychiatry in the areas of mood and anxiety spectrum disorders and sleep medicine. Over the past year alone, he has published 24 papers in peer-reviewed journals.

Krystal has played a pivotal role in shaping the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences' research enterprise. He directs the Dolby Family Center for Mood Disorders, directs the Interventional Psychiatry Program, and leads the Clinical and Translational Sleep Research Program. He is also a co-director of the UCSF Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Program, Treatment-Resistant Depression Clinic, and Insomnia Clinic. In addition, Krystal is a highly sought after consultant and teacher who serves as mentor to an astounding number of faculty and trainees, and has developed and implemented a number of new programs to facilitate their success.

Royer Award for Excellence in Community Psychiatry

The Royer Award for Excellence in Community Psychiatry will be awarded to Robin Randall, MD, MPH. Randall, the medical director at the Edgewood Center for Children and Families and a volunteer clinical associate professor in the department, has made enormous contributions to the advancement of psychiatry in ways that have benefited vulnerable and underserved children, youth, and families in San Francisco County. He has selflessly focused his considerable talents on teaching and supporting his team of medical providers to provide high quality psychiatric care for children and youth who are often overlooked, misdiagnosed, overmedicated, and trauma-impacted.

Randall has devoted his career to serving children and youth involved in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems who have often suffered abuse; emancipated foster youth who struggle with homelessness, unemployment and substance use disorder; and the families of these children. In addition to his 30 years of distinguished community-based psychiatric care for, and service to, his vulnerable patients, he has also had an often life-changing impact on the interns, residents, and fellows whom he has taught and mentored over the years.


About UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, with a mission focused on research (basic, translational, clinical), teaching, patient care, and public service.

UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences conducts its clinical, educational, and research efforts at a variety of locations in Northern California, including Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital; UCSF Medical Centers at Parnassus Heights, Mission Bay, and Mount Zion; UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland; Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center; the San Francisco VA Health Care System; UCSF Fresno; and numerous community-based sites around the San Francisco Bay Area.

About the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences

The UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established by the extraordinary generosity of Joan and Sanford I. "Sandy" Weill, brings together world-class researchers with top-ranked physicians to solve some of the most complex challenges in the human brain.

The UCSF Weill Institute leverages UCSF’s unrivaled bench-to-bedside excellence in the neurosciences. It unites three UCSF departments—Neurology, Psychiatry, and Neurological Surgery—that are highly esteemed for both patient care and research, as well as the Neuroscience Graduate Program, a cross-disciplinary alliance of nearly 100 UCSF faculty members from 15 basic-science departments, as well as the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, a multidisciplinary research center focused on finding effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.

About UCSF

The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF’s primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area.