DR. HEATHER BERLIN, PhD, MPH

Dr. Heather Berlin is a cognitive neuroscientist, licensed clinical psychologist, and Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in NY. She specializes in lifespan treatment (child, adolescent, and adult) of anxiety and impulsive and compulsive disorders (e.g. OCD), blending her neural perspective with cognitive behavioral therapy (e.g. exposure and response prevention (ERP)), mindfulness, and humanistic approaches. 

 

Dr. Berlin received her doctorate from the University of Oxford, Master of Public Health from Harvard University, and Master’s in Psychology from the New School for Social Research. She completed her NIMH post-doctoral fellowship at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and trained in clinical neuropsychology at Weill Cornell Medicine in the Department of Neurological Surgery. She has published over 40 peer-reviewed articles and chapters in textbooks and high-impact journals. Her research explores the neural basis of impulsive and compulsive psychiatric and neurological disorders with the aim of developing novel treatments. She is also interested in the brain basis of consciousness and dynamic unconscious processes.

 

Dr. Berlin is a visiting scholar at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and was a Visiting Professor at Vassar College, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology/University of Zurich, and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the recipient of numerous honors including the Young Investigator Award from the American Neuropsychiatric Association, the Young Investigator Award from the National Education Alliance for Borderline Personality Disorder, and the Clifford Yorke Prize from the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society. 

 

Passionate about science communication, destigmatizing mental illness, and promoting women in STEM, Berlin is a committee member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Science and Entertainment Exchange and the American Association for the Advancement of Science's (AAAS) Committee on Science and Technology Engagement with the Public. She co-hosts StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, hosted television series on PBS and the Discovery Channel. Dr. Berlin also co-wrote and starred in the critically acclaimed off-Broadway and Edinburgh Fringe Festival shows, Off the Top, about the neuroscience of improvisation, and Impulse Control, about the science of impulsivity. She has made numerous media appearances including on the BBC, History Channel, Netflix, National Geographic, and TEDx, and was featured in the documentary film Bill Nye: Science Guy.