From the Faculty's Perspective

Melissa Arbuckle, MD, PhD 

Being the Director of Residency Training at Columbia has been an amazing and rewarding career. I love being immersed in the residency experience and grappling with the administrative and curricular issues that I face daily. However, meeting individually with residents for supervision and mentorship are the highlights of my week. At the same time, I’ve also brought my love of research to this position. One of the most challenging tasks of a residency training director is keeping up with advances in the field. From an academic standpoint, this requires continuously evaluating and updating the curriculum to keep pace with emerging science. In addition, it includes teaching residents how to “evaluate their care of patients, to appraise and assimilate scientific evidence, and to continuously improve patient care based on constant self-evaluation and life-long learning,” one of the core training requirements within residency. 
In line with these efforts, my particular focus has been training residents in neuroscience and quality improvement. I am also actively involved in our research track program and enjoy mentoring residents as they develop their scholarly interests.
The opportunity to combine my interests in education, clinical work, and research, as part of an academic community with supportive colleagues and generous mentors, has made Columbia a special place for me. Getting to work with residents and seeing the bright future facing the field of psychiatry makes it all the more rewarding. 

E. David Leonardo, MD

As the Associate Director of Residency Training and for Neuroscience and Research, I oversee resident research experiences, help residents to identify opportunities, and provide guidance and mentorship once the research experience is underway. In addition, I oversee the neuroscience curriculum for the residency, ensuring that our residents have broad exposure to key neuroscience concepts in ways that are accessible and applicable to their clinical experience.
I arrived at Columbia almost 20 years ago with the goal of establishing a basic neuroscience research career that was informed by excellent clinical training in psychiatry. Since then, I have been fortunate to pursue this goal amongst a group of immensely talented colleagues- both psychiatrists and neuroscientists endeavoring to understand how the brain works with the aim of restoring function when things go awry. At the same time, I have maintained a clinical practice, which, while deeply rewarding, keeps me humble about the limitations of our current knowledge.
This is an exciting time to become a psychiatrist as the field wrestles with integrating our clinical lexicon with the rapid progress in the understanding of brain biology. I look forward to working with and helping to develop a new generation of psychiatrists passionate about moving the field forward through research and practice.