Akira Sawa, MD

Psychiatrist and neuroscientist Akira Sawa is the director of the Johns Hopkins Schizophrenia Center; Professor of psychiatry, neuroscience, biomedical engineering, genetic medicine, and pharmacology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; and Professor of mental health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He started his Johns Hopkins career as a tenure-track faculty member in 2002. Since 2012, he has served as the Director and Innovation Chair of the Johns Hopkins Schizophrenia Center. The Center focuses on patient care, research, education and public outreach for psychotic disorders and severe mental disorders. Accordingly, Sawa’s goal is to integrate the frontline science with daily patient care in an effective manner. He has maintained federal center grants over the decade, leading multidisciplinary clinical/translational projects to address mechanistic questions for major mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, mood disorders and Alzheimer’s disease, with a particular emphasis on early detection and early intervention of these conditions. He was elected as a fellow to the Association of American Physicians in 2020, and as an AAAS fellow in 2024. He has also served for multiple academic societies and clinical charities as an advisory board, council member, and fellow in the US and UK.