Brigitte Kieffer, Ph.D.

Brigitte Kieffer, Ph.D.

Scientific Director, Douglas Institute ; Professor, Department of Psychiatry, McGill University Molecular psychiatry, addiction and mood disorders, pain, development disorders.

Phone: 
514-761-6131

Areas of expertise: Molecular psychiatry, addiction and mood disorders, pain, development disorders

As of January 2014, Brigitte L. Kieffer, PhD, is the new Scientific Director of the Research Centre. She is also a Professor of Psychiatry and the Monique H. Bourgeois Chair in Pervasive Developmental Disorders at the Faculty of Medicine of McGill University.

Dr. Kieffer graduated from the University of Strasbourg, where she later became a Professor. She then went on to become Research Director at the Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (Inserm) in France. She developed her main research activity at the Institut de génétique et de biologie moléculaire et cellulaire (IGBMC) in Strasbourg in 2001 and directed this institute from 2012 to 2013.

Between 2001 and 2012, she received three major awards from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the French Académie des sciences. She was also named a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and was made as a Chevalier (Knight) of the Legion of Honour by the President of the French Republic. In December 2013, she was elected Membre of the French Académie des sciences.

Dr. Kieffer lends us her international reputation and expertise in molecular neurobiology, particularly in the field of opiate receptors. Her work had a major impact on research in addiction, mood disorders and other mental illnesses such as autism.