UC San Francisco School of Medicine Dean Talmadge E. King, Jr, MD, announced earlier today that three members of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences—Ana Gonzalez, DO; Lisa Inman, MD; and Daniel Mathalon, PhD, MD—will be awarded the J. Elliot Royer Award for Excellence in Psychiatry. All three will be presented with their awards at the next Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences faculty meeting on Sept. 17, 2024.
The J. Elliot Royer Award was 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.
Community psychiatry award recognizes pair of local behavioral health leaders
Ana Gonzalez, DO, and Lisa Inman, MD
For the first time in history, the Royer Award for Excellence in Community Psychiatry will be awarded jointly to Ana Gonzalez, DO, and Lisa Inman, MD, for their work as co-chief medical officers of the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH)’s Behavioral Health Services. In his announcement of this year's winners, King hailed Inman and Gonzalez as "committed and inspiring leaders who have navigated San Francisco’s community behavioral health care system, amending and creating programs and services to address the evolving behavioral health care needs arising from increasing homelessness, the COVID pandemic, the Fentanyl crisis and other recent challenges faced by the communities they serve."
Stepping into their co-CMO roles during the peak of the COVID pandemic, Gonzalez and Inman readily assumed leadership in SFDPH’s overall response, as well as the Behavioral Health Division’s response. As psychiatrists, they quickly came up to speed on rapidly evolving scientific guidance and translated it to behavioral health settings. They were quickly regarded as local experts and called upon frequently by Bay Area leaders and media.
Inman and Gonzalez have excelled in their leadership of the multiple and rapidly changing policy and practice issues facing behavioral health in California. They have led the clinical implementation of a new electronic health record system, both within directly operated clinical sites as well as more than 50 contracted sites. They also led the clinical and policy implementation of critical new statewide initiatives, including major Medi-Cal policy and payment reform (CalAIM), implementation of San Francisco's CARE Court and SB43, each of which significantly affected delivery of clinical care across San Francisco.
In addition to their positions at SFDPH, both are also volunteer clinical professors at UCSF, playing key roles in the department's public psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry fellowships.
Gonzalez and Inman are both strong and compassionate leaders, and together they make a remarkable team. They are a model of collaboration, coordination, and mutual support that benefits their clients and the larger public health system in ways large and small. Their shared leadership is a testament to their shared goals—to provide the best care possible to clients, to support and encourage staff and trainee growth and well-being, and to contribute to the greater good of our community.
Academic psychiatry award honors preeminent researcher, clinician, and educator
Daniel Mathalon, PhD, MD
The Royer Award for Excellence in Academic Psychiatry will be awarded to Daniel Mathalon, PhD, MD, in recognition of his long track record of outstanding contributions as a mentor, educator, clinician, and researcher as a professor in the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and member of the San Francisco VA Health Care System (SFVAHCS).
It would be difficult to capture the breadth of Mathalon’s research accomplishments fully, but he is perhaps best known for his work in the field of prodromal psychosis, developing EEG and fMRI biomarkers that predict which individuals with prodromal symptoms are at greatest risk for transition to full psychosis. He has published over 430 peer-reviewed papers and has an H-index of 100, demonstrating the profound impact of his work on psychiatric electrophysiology and neuroimaging research. In addition, he has a long history of service on NIH study sections and review committees, editorial boards of top scientific journals, and the highly selective Scientific Council of the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation. Together with Judith Ford, PhD, he leads the Brain Imaging and EEG Lab at UCSF and the Northern California Institute for Research and Education.
Mathalon is a superb and highly sought-after research mentor to UCSF fellows and junior faculty. He has served as a primary mentor or co-mentor for many junior UCSF faculty during their mentored VA or NIH Research Career Development Awards. He also continues to help shape the future of academic psychiatry at UCSF as the department deputy vice chair for research at SFVAHCS, where he has made significant contributions to the department’s efforts to address diversity, equity, and inclusion values as they pertain to research, paths to research for faculty who start in non-research tracks, and efforts to support and promote COVID-19-related research.
In addition to his scientific contributions, Mathalon has built a reputation as a master clinician who provides state-of-the-art training and supervision of residents and medical students rotating through the UCSF Path Program for Early Psychosis. He has been active in educating community clinicians about early psychosis, including the distinction between prodromal level symptoms and fully psychotic symptoms, and regularly gives outreach talks to clinicians working on the front lines with youth—often from disadvantaged backgrounds—who are experiencing early signs of psychosis.
"Throughout his career, Dr. Mathalon has firmly established himself as an internationally renowned expert in his field and a tireless advocate for integrating research, education, and clinical care across psychiatry and the behavioral sciences," said King. "His sustained commitment to research excellence, mentorship, and service have made him a true leader in the highest circles of academic psychiatry."
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 the UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building; UCSF 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—Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Neurology, 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.
