Jeff Cottrell, PhD

Jeff Cottrell is Head of Neurodevelopment & Psychiatry at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research. Jeff received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from MIT in 2004, following which he joined Galenea, a startup company focused on neuropsychiatric disease drug discovery. There, he pioneered the development of high-throughput screening assays of synaptic transmission and their implementation for multiple drug discovery programs. After 11 years at Galenea, he joined the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute as Director of Translational Research, where he developed and led a team translating discoveries of psychiatric disease genetics into programs for the development of mechanism-based therapeutics. Following five years at the Broad, he held leadership positions in two startup companies, Delix and Serqet, focused on neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. In December of 2021, Jeff then joined Novartis, where he leads a team developing novel strategies for treating neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric diseases using modalities ranging from small molecules to gene therapies. He holds an A.B. in Psychology from Harvard University.