Laura Weiss Roberts

Dr. Roberts serves as Chairman and the Katharine Dexter McCormick and Stanley McCormick Memorial Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She is an internationally recognized scholar in bioethics, psychiatry, medicine, and medical education, and is identified as a foremost psychiatric ethicist in the United States. Her work has led to advances in understanding of ethical aspects of physical and mental illness research, societal implications for genetic innovation, the role of stigma in health disparities, the impact of medical student and physician health issues, and optimal approaches to fostering professionalism in medicine.

Dr. Roberts currently serves as editor-in-chief of the peer reviewed journal, Academic Medicine. Dr. Roberts served as the editor-in-chief of the peer reviewed journal, Academic Psychiatry, from 2002 to 2019. In June, 2016, Dr. Roberts was named the Editor-In-Chief of American Psychiatric Association Publishing.

Dr. Roberts has received extensive scientific peer-reviewed funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy, and private foundations to perform empirical studies of modern ethical issues in research, clinical care, and health policy, with a particular focus on vulnerable and special populations. Her work has been published in eminent journals of psychiatry, including the American Journal of Psychiatry, Biological Psychiatry, and the Archives of General Psychiatry. Dr. Roberts has written hundreds of peer-reviewed articles and other scholarly works, and she has written or edited several books in the areas of professionalism and ethics in medicine, psychiatric research, professional development for physicians, and clinical psychiatry.

Dr. Roberts has been the Editor-in-Chief for the journal Academic Psychiatry since 2002 and serves as an editorial board member and peer reviewer for many scientific and education journals. Dr. Roberts was the first woman to be elected President of the American Association of Chairs of Departments of Psychiatry. She was chosen to receive the Distinguished Psychiatrist award from the American Psychiatric Association, in 2005, 2010, and 2014, and she was recognized as the principal leader in psychiatric education in the United States and Canada by the University of Toronto in 2008. Dr. Roberts has also received numerous awards for leadership, teaching, and science, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Academic Psychiatry in 2010, the Nancy C.A. Roeske, M.D., Certificate of Recognition for Excellence in Medical Student Education from the American Psychiatric Association and the Faculty Teaching Excellence Award from the Education Council at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine.

Having received her Bachelor of Arts in History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science and Medicine and Master of Arts in the Conceptual Foundations of Science from the University of Chicago, she then completed her medical degree and a fellowship in clinical medical ethics at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine.

Dr. Roberts then performed her residency training in psychiatry at University of New Mexico School of Medicine, where she also received additional clinical preparation in child and adolescent psychiatry. Dr. Roberts served on the faculty of University of New Mexico School of Medicine for nine years, performing evidence-based ethics research, administration, education, and clinical work in the specialized area of consultation-liaison psychiatry. While serving as Professor and Vice Chairman for her Department, Dr. Roberts established the University of New Mexico Institute for Ethics and was appointed the Jack and Donna Rust Professor of Biomedical Ethics prior to her departure in 2003.

She then moved to the Medical College of Wisconsin, where for seven years she served as chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and the Charles E. Kubly Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine.

In 2010 she joined Stanford University School of Medicine to lead the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences there.