Residency Life, Education, and Benefits

Weill Cornell Medical College's Department of Psychiatry offers residents a wide range of opportunities to participate in scholarly work, including clinical and translational research. All residents participate in the residency’s Clinical Scholars Institute (CSI) program, under the leadership of Dr. Katharine Phillips. CSI is a novel educational program that promotes lifelong engagement in scholarship, fostering residents’ abilities to think like a scholar during residency and further develop their skills to do scholarly work after residency (if they wish to include scholarly work in their career path).

The CSI program includes seminars that focus on scholarship and a writing seminar. All residents complete a scholarly project in an area of interest, which they present to the department at the Senior Projects Colloquium in their PGY-4 year. Selected projects are also presented at a poster session and at departmental Grand Rounds; some are published and presented at national meetings. Residents are allowed protected time to attend conferences and present their scholarly work. A treasured CSI highlight is the annual Academic Pathways Day, during which faculty members discuss their career paths, illustrating the many different ways in which scholarly/academic work can be integrated into a psychiatry career.

Scholarly work is broadly defined. It may consist of a review of a topic, a book chapter, a case report, medical narrative writing, working with a faculty member on an ongoing research project, or spearheading a new research project under the mentorship of a faculty member. Investigators in the department are examining important questions in many areas, such as neuroimaging, biomarkers, neuromodulation, neurobiology, developmental neurobiology and cognitive neuroscience. Additional areas of research focus include digital therapeutics, psychotherapy research, services/community-based research, suicidality, the history of psychiatry and other topics. Disorders that are being studied include (but are not limited to) substance use disorders, mood disorders, trauma-related disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder. For residents who wish to conduct a research project, research training focuses on planning and conducting the project under the supervision of a mentor(s) in an area of interest. Residents who are interested in doing research during their career may go on to a postdoctoral research fellowship upon completion of residency training.