MQ Fellows Award
The MQ Fellows Award supports the best and brightest early career scientists from across the globe, who are asking challenging questions that will contribute to transformative advances in mental health research.
By supporting a diverse portfolio of early career scientists MQ is working to retain talent in the field, and increase the diversity of the professionals researching mental health conditions such as depression, Borderline Personality Disorder, and anxiety. The Fellows Award supports the best and brightest early career scientists from across the globe, who are asking challenging questions that will contribute to transformative advances in mental health research.
US MQ Fellows
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Dr Susanne Ahmar
identified brain activity related to Obsessive behaviors, the first step towards developing new treatments for OCD.
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Dr Joshua Roffman
found that by increasing the consumption of folic acid during pregnancy, changes occur in children’s brain development, thus reducing the incidence of psychotic symptoms in later life.
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Dr Jeremiah Cohen
used innovative techniques to explore the role that brain chemical serotonin plays in affecting mood which will lead to better drugs to treat mood disorders in the future.
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Professor Sergiu Pasca
developed a method to create 3D brain circuits ‘in a dish’, providing a pioneering new way to understand how different parts of the brain develop.
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Dr Ian Maze
took a novel, multi-disciplinary approach to understanding how serotonin impacts major depressive disorder which could lead to improved pharmacological treatments for depression.
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Professor Jean-Baptiste Pingault
found strong evidence around the direct impact of bullying on the development of mental health problems in young people.
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Dr Patrick Rothwell
identified the brain cells related to impulse control which could lead to the development of treatments to curb negative behaviors.
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Dr Marisa Marraccini
is co-designing a virtual reality tool to help adolescents who have been hospitalised for suicide-related crisis.
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Dr Leslie Johnson
is adapting and testing an existing treatment for people with type 2 diabetes in order to treat patients with type 1 diabetes.
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Dr Alexandre Lussier
is running a longitudinal study of gene-environment interactions and epigenetic mechanisms to understand how depressive disorders influence suicide risk.
Apply for our US Fellows Award 2024
Who can apply: Early-career researchers based in the United States.
Funding period: 3 years
Funding amount: up to £225,000* ($285,000 is an estimated equivalent based on current exchange rates which can vary.)
MQ seeks to fund a diverse research portfolio that reflects a bio-psycho-social approach to mental health. The 2024 MQ Fellows Awards are open to researchers anywhere in the United States and from all disciplines related to mental health research. Research can be based in the laboratory, clinic or field and may involve theoretical, experimental, social science or medical humanities approaches.
The 2024 US Fellows Call is particularly interested in the following highlight areas:
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research that explores adolescent mental health treatment and prevention including but not limited to, anxiety, depression, and ADHD.
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research that is focused on topics such as under-represented populations, the determinants of mental health, the distribution of mental illnesses across populations, community mental health, mental health within schools as well as on policy and equity issues.
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research that detects targets for intervention, tests the effectiveness of interventions, culturally validates interventions, and develops new interventions or tailors existing interventions to improve effectiveness and reach to underserved populations.
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Item descrResearch that considers novel interventions to reduce early mortality in those in mental distress. (See O’Connor et al. 2023)
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Research looking at mechanisms and treatments of early psychosis.
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Research looking at the mechanisms and improved treatments of bipolar disorder