Mentors & collaborators
The Sultan Lab's program has been shaped by formal training mentors, senior scientific advisors, and active research collaborators. Sigmund stands on the work they have built over decades.
K12 & T32 mentors
The mentors of record on Dr. Sultan's NIH NIDA K12 award and his prior T32 research fellowship — the relationships that built the lab.
K12 Primary Mentor · 2021–present
Kennedy-Leavy Professor of Psychiatry
Chief, Division on Substance Use Disorders · Columbia University Irving Medical Center / NYSPI
Primary mentor on the NIDA K12 Mentored Clinical Scientist Development Program. Supervises career development in substance use disorders research; co-author on Pediatrics 2026 cannabis paper.
K12 Co-Mentor
Chief, Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry · MGH Trustees Chair in Addiction Medicine
Massachusetts General Hospital · Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
K12 co-mentor providing expertise on ADHD across the lifespan and substance use disorders. Co-author on the Pediatrics 2026 cannabis paper. h-index 124; ~54,000 citations.
K12 NLP Mentor
Professor of Biomedical Informatics · Creator of the MedLEE clinical NLP system
Department of Biomedical Informatics · Columbia University Irving Medical Center
K12 mentor for the natural-language processing work underlying CEBA-ADHD and the Sultan Lab's clinical-record phenotyping pipeline. Dr. Sultan's K12 work applies Dr. Friedman's MedLEE system to extract granular clinical data from unstructured clinical records — identifying adolescent ENDS/vaping cohorts (n=38,261) buried in narrative clinical notes. Pioneer of clinical NLP; American College of Medical Informatics; National Academy of Medicine.
T32 Senior Research Mentor · 2016–2019
Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Psychiatry, Medicine, and Law · Professor of Epidemiology
Columbia University Irving Medical Center · Mailman School of Public Health
T32 senior mentor; co-author on the landmark 2019 JAMA Network Open paper on antipsychotic prescribing in ADHD youth (440+ citations). h-index ~125; 66,000+ citations. Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher. MPI on the MarketScan R01 underpinning Sigmund's Generation 2.
T32 Fellowship Program Director
Jeremy M. Veenstra-VanderWeele, MD
Ruane Professor for the Implementation of Science · Director, Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
Columbia University · NYSPI · NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital
T32 fellowship program director overseeing research training. Co-author on the JAMA Psychiatry 2025 paper on protective effects of ADHD medication. ~23,500 citations.
Senior scientific advisors
Senior figures providing scientific oversight across the Sigmund program.
Chair · Columbia Psychiatry
Chair, Department of Psychiatry · Executive Director, NYSPI · Former Director, NIMH (2016–2024)
Columbia University Irving Medical Center · New York State Psychiatric Institute
Former NIMH Director; architect of the IMPACT-MH framework that informs Sigmund's precision-psychiatry approach. Chairs the department at Columbia where Sigmund is being developed and validated.
Director · Computational Psychiatry Program
Director, Computational Psychiatry Program · Florence Irving Associate Professor of Psychiatry
Columbia University Irving Medical Center · New York State Psychiatric Institute
Leads the Computational Psychiatry Program — the institutional home for clinically actionable ML and AI in psychiatric decision-making at Columbia. Methodological collaborator on the multi-vector RAG architecture underlying Sigmund.
Senior Scientific Advisor · PAWS
Anne & Joel Ehrenkranz Dean · Nash Family Professor of Neuroscience · Director, Friedman Brain Institute
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Provides neurobiological validity review for the PAWS digital therapeutic project. h-index 216; 186,953+ citations. National Academy of Sciences (2025) and National Academy of Medicine. Trained under Nobel Laureate Paul Greengard.
Senior Scientific Advisor
Robert L. McNiel Jr. Professor of Translational Research · Chair, Department of Psychiatry · Editor-in-Chief, Biological Psychiatry
Yale University School of Medicine · Yale-New Haven Health System
Endorsed the PAWS project. h-index 200+; 86,158+ citations. National Academy of Medicine. Pioneer in ketamine research for depression.
Research collaborators
Co-investigators and authors on ongoing studies tied to the lab.
PAWS Co-Investigator
Ward-Coleman Chair in Translational Neuroscience · Director, Addiction Institute
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
PAWS study co-investigator. Cannabis and psychosis prevention research. h-index 69–73; 26,000+ citations. National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine. $30M+ NIH funding.
Research Collaborator
Professor of Psychiatry and Molecular Medicine
Zucker Hillside Hospital · Hofstra Northwell
Co-author on psychopharmacoepidemiology studies and neuroscience-based nomenclature (JAACAP 2018). h-index 145; 100,000+ citations. Ranked #1 world expert in antipsychotics (Clarivate, annually since 2014).
CEBA-ADHD R01 · PAR-25-283
Named investigators and collaborators on the CEBA-ADHD R01 (PAR-25-283), the NIH grant powering the next generation of Sigmund: a graph-based RAG clinical knowledge base, co-designed user interface for community ADHD prescribers, and an 18-month stepped-wedge implementation pilot across 12 community clinicians at a community psychiatry clinic.
Principal Investigator
Ryan S. Sultan, MD
Director, Sultan Lab for Mental Health Informatics
Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Leads overall project; expertise in ADHD epidemiology, psychiatric informatics, NLP, and AI-enabled digital therapeutics; oversees study design and execution.
Senior Mentor (Off-Site)
Chief, Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry · MGH Trustees Chair in Addiction Medicine
Massachusetts General Hospital · Harvard Medical School
Provides mentorship and clinical guidance; expertise in ADHD pharmacotherapy and comorbidity across the lifespan supporting the translational direction of the R01.
Senior Mentor (On-Site) · Epidemiology & Quality-of-Care Advisor
Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Psychiatry, Medicine, and Law
Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Contributes expertise in national practice patterns and gaps in ADHD care; informs the R01's focus on improving evidence-based delivery in community settings where most ADHD care actually happens.
Clinical Guideline & Evaluation Expert
Timothy D. Becker, MD
Psychiatry · ADHD clinical guideline expertise
Serves on the CEBA-ADHD Aim 1 Query Generation Panel, evaluating AI outputs for clinical accuracy, omission severity, and guideline fidelity. Co-developer of the Guideline Concordance Score (GCS) used as the primary outcome in the Aim 2b benchmarking study.
Technical Collaborator · AI & Informatics Advisor
Mobile sensing, human-centered AI, and clinical informatics
Department of Biomedical Informatics · Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Supports AI system architecture for the CEBA-ADHD Graph-RAG knowledge base; expertise in HCI, applied ML, and workflow integration; contributes to clinician adoption and implementation evaluation. PI of an NIMH-funded mobile-sensing-to-MLLM clinical dashboard program where Dr. Sultan serves as clinical collaborator.
Implementation Science Collaborator
Professor of Clinical Psychiatry
Columbia University Irving Medical Center · New York State Psychiatric Institute
Guides CEBA-ADHD implementation strategy across feasibility, acceptability, workflow integration, and scalability. Brings decades of global mental health implementation science experience to the stepped-wedge pilot design for non-specialty community psychiatric settings.
Clinical Trials / Translational Psychiatry Collaborator
Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics · Clinical Director, Seaver Autism Center
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Provides experimental therapeutics and clinical trial design expertise; supports safety and responsible AI integration in pediatric psychiatry across diverse healthcare systems.
Published co-authors & external collaborators
Senior co-authors on the peer-reviewed work underlying Sigmund, plus active cross-institutional collaborators across the lab's grant portfolio.
JAMA Psychiatry editorial co-author
Resident Physician · Department of Psychiatry
Columbia University Irving Medical Center · NYSPI
Co-author on the 2026 invited JAMA Psychiatry editorial — "Protective Effects of ADHD Medication: Diminishing Returns as Treatment Broadens" — commenting on Li et al.'s 247,420-patient Swedish self-controlled case series.
Cannabis epidemiology · senior co-author
Professor of Epidemiology and Psychiatry
Columbia Mailman School of Public Health · Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Co-author on the 2025 Pediatrics paper on cannabis access by retailer type in New York. Internationally recognized cannabis-use-disorder epidemiologist; defined the diagnostic standard now used across U.S. surveillance research.
Substance use surveillance · co-author
Director, Division of Epidemiology, Services, and Prevention Research (DESPR)
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), NIH
Co-author on the 2019 American Journal of Preventive Medicine paper on ENDS/e-cigarette use among U.S. young adults. Leads NIDA's national substance-use epidemiology and services-research portfolio.
FDA clozapine REMS · co-investigator
Professor of Psychiatry · Atlanta VA Health Care System
Emory University School of Medicine
Senior co-author on the 2017 Journal of Clinical Psychiatry analysis of the FDA modification of the clozapine REMS — the work that provided the empirical foundation for the U.S. monitoring standard now expanding access to clozapine in treatment-resistant schizophrenia.
Pharmacoepidemiology · co-investigator
Board of Governors Professor · Director, Center for Health Services Research
Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research · Rutgers University
Co-author on the 2019 JAMA Network Open paper on antipsychotic prescribing in youth with ADHD. Active collaborator on the ongoing IQVIA stimulant-use trends and patterns analyses underpinning the MarketScan R01.
Pediatric psychopharmacology · co-author
Margaret C. Osterman Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry · Chair, Pritzker Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health
Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago · Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine
Co-author on the 2018 Journal of Child & Adolescent Psychopharmacology paper on national patterns of psychotropic medication prescribing in young people. Decades of leadership in child psychopharmacology research and clinical trials methodology.
Adolescent substance use · co-author
Director, Adolescent Substance Use and Addiction Program · Associate Professor of Pediatrics
Boston Children's Hospital · Harvard Medical School
Co-author on the 2026 Pediatrics paper on cannabis use among U.S. adolescents. National leader in adolescent substance-use screening; co-developer of the S2BI and CRAFFT instruments.
Pediatric addiction medicine · co-author
Chief Behavioral Health Officer · Pediatric Addiction Medicine Specialist
Boston Children's Hospital · Harvard Medical School
Co-author on the 2026 Pediatrics paper on cannabis use among U.S. adolescents. National voice on equity-centered adolescent addiction care.
APSARD plenary collaborator
Professor of Pediatrics · Director, Center for ADHD
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center · University of Cincinnati College of Medicine
Co-organizer of the APSARD 2026 plenary "Do Stimulant Medications Prevent Substance Use?" at which Dr. Sultan delivered the invited Saturday morning plenary address. Internationally recognized for sluggish-cognitive-tempo and ADHD-sleep research.
Health economics · co-author
Senior Advisor for Mental Health Services, Epidemiology, and Economics
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) · NIH
Co-author on the 2018 Journal of Child & Adolescent Psychopharmacology paper on national patterns of psychotropic prescribing in young people. NIMH's longest-tenured health-economics advisor on services research.
Photos forthcoming. Initials shown in their place — drop a portrait into assets/mentors/ and swap the avatar in to replace.
