Harvard Professorship
The 72 Fund established the Donovan-Chien Family Professorship in the Field of Psychology at Harvard Medical School to further scholarship in the areas of obsessive-compulsive disorder, digital mental health, global mental health, anxiety, and depression. In addition, the professorship will advance the design of training programs and patient care outreach worldwide with the goal of maximizing reach.
Dr. Sabine Wilhelm has been appointed as the inaugural incumbent.
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Sabine Wilhelm, Ph.D., is a Professor at Harvard Medical School (HMS), Donovan-Chien Family Professor in the Field of Psychology at Harvard Medical School, Chief of Psychology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Director of the Center for Obsessive Compulsive and Related Disorders (CORD) at MGH, and Director of the Center for Digital Mental Health in Psychiatry at MGH.
Dr. Wilhelm is recognized as a leading psychotherapy researcher in obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, including anxiety and depression. To address the increasing rates of mental health concerns in the context of a global mental health service provider shortage, her recent work has focused on the development of scalable digital approaches to treatment. She has published 345 papers and chapters, as well as nine books. She has also given around 300 lectures on advances in psychotherapy, including many invited international keynotes. Dr. Wilhelm has developed many digital psychotherapy training programs for mental health service providers and has led patient care outreach to support individuals locally, nationally, and internationally. She has mentored more than 50 junior investigators in the field. Dr. Wilhelm has developed smartphone-based treatments for OCD, depression, and body dysmorphic disorder. She is currently working on AI and other cutting-edge approaches to enhance the detection and treatment of a wide range of mental health concerns, such as digital phenotyping to detect symptom worsening, machine learning algorithms to match patients to treatments, and generative AI to support more personalized and effective interventions . Her ultimate goal is to use technology-based interventions to increase global access to high-quality mental health interventions. Dr. Wilhelm has been the principal investigator or site principal investigator of many NIMH- and foundation-funded clinical research grants investigating medication, cognitive-behavioral therapy, digital services, and other treatments for a range of psychiatric disorders in children and adults. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the distinguished Aaron T. Beck Award from the Academy of Cognitive Therapy. She was also awarded the Peter K. Ranney Innovation Award from the World Medical Innovation Forum, and she is the recipient of the 2023 NAMI Scientific Research Award.
Dr. Wilhelm holds or has held many national or international leadership positions in psychology and digital mental health, including past president of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT), advisory board member to One Mind’s PsyberGuide, chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the International OCD Foundation, and founding board member for the new Society for Digital Mental Health (SDMH).
Dr. Wilhelm is known nationally and internationally as a researcher, educator, and clinician who has greatly enhanced the global understanding of and approaches for the development and testing of cognitive behavioral treatment for many psychiatric disorders. Her work has had a significant positive impact on the mental health field.
