Professor & President’s Excellence Chair in Brain Health, UBC Department of Psychiatry, Division of Neuroscience and Translational Psychiatry
Associate Head, Research & International Affairs, UBC Department of Psychiatry
Scientific Lead, Early Psychosis Intervention Services, Vancouver Coastal Health
Email: sophia.frangou@ubc.ca
Short Biography
Dr. Frangou, MD, PhD, FRCPsych, FRCPC, received her master’s degree in Neuroscience and her Ph.D. from the University of London, UK, and completed her psychiatric training at the Maudsley Hospital, UK. Prior to joining UBC, she was Reader in Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience, King’s College London (UK) and Professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (USA), with which she maintains an active affiliation.
Research Focus
Dr. Frangou uses advanced neuroimaging and bioinformatics methods to study brain-behaviour relationships and how they are influenced by genetic and environmental factors. Her work has greatly advanced the understanding of the pathophysiology of mood and psychotic disorders and made groundbreaking contributions to the characterization of brain mechanisms of “resilience”.
Publications
Dr. Frangou has authored more than 240 highly cited papers and has written or contributed to ten books on mental illness and on academic leadership for women.
Significant Accomplishments & Professional Contribution
Dr. Frangou is a fellow of the European Psychiatric Association (EPA), the Royal College of Psychiatrists (UK), the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, and the American Psychiatric Association.
She is the founding chair of the Neuroimaging Section of the EPA and the Neuroimaging Network of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology. She leads the Lifespan Working Group of the Enhancing NeuroImaging Genetics Through Meta-Analysis (ENIGMA) consortium. She is Editor-in-Chief of European Psychiatry and Human Brain Mapping and a member of the editorial board of major scientific journals.
She has received multiple awards including the 2019 Colvin Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Bipolar Mood Disorders Research from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation and the 2020 Educator Award from the Society of Biological Psychiatry. In 2022, the Society awarded her and the Women’s Leadership Group the George Thompson Award for promoting women’s role in academic psychiatry.
