Harvard-MGB Suicide Research Colloquium
The Harvard-MGB Suicide Research Colloquium is a series of seminars designed to support the work of local researchers and trainees focused on suicide understanding, prediction, and prevention and connect them to a broad range of experts in the field. Register for upcoming seminars below or view past presentations here! Reception with light refreshments to follow.
Upcoming Sessions
Session 21: Recent Advances in the Use of Machine Learning-Based Approaches to Determining Suicide Risk from Electronic Health Data
September 29th, 2026 | 3:00 – 5:00 PM
William James Hall, Suite 1550
33 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA, 02138
- Peter Franz, PhD
- Christopher Kennedy, PhD
- Amar Mandavia, PhD
- Individual talk titles coming soon!
Past Sessions
Session 20: Emerging Scholars Spotlight: Practice-Based Approaches in Suicide Prevention
May 26th, 2026 | 3:30 – 5:00 PM
Simches 185 Cambridge St, Boston MA, 02114
Floor 3, Room 3.120
- Jessica Stubbing, PhD: Toward Evidence Based Inpatient Care: Adapting BCBT for Suicide Prevention for Adolescents
- Benjamin Wade, PhD: Personalizing Interventional Psychiatry: Prognostic and Prescriptive Predictors of SI Remission
- Bo Wang, PhD: Leveraging Large Language Models to Extract Social Determinants of Health from Electronic Health Records
Session 19: Improving Treatments for Suicide Risk: Recent Advances from Qualitative and Treatment Development Research
April 28th, 2026 | 3-5 PM
33 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA, 02138
William James Hall Room 1550
- Kylie Li, PsyD: A Pathways Framework for Suicide Help-Seeking: Results from the World Mental Health International College Students Qualitative Study
- Chloe Roske, AB: At the Front Lines of Suicide Prevention: A Qualitative Study of Emergency Clinician Risk Assessment Practices
- Shirley Yen, PhD: From Clinical Intervention Development to Implementation: Skills to Enhance Positivity as an Example
Session 18: Medicolegal Considerations for Psychiatric Research
March 24th, 2026 | 3:30-5:30 PM
Simches 185 Cambridge St, Boston MA, 02114
Floor 3, Room 3.120
- Rebecca Brendel, MD, JD
- Gary Jacobson, MD
- Douglas Jacobs, MD
Session 17: Understanding Suicide Risk as a Dynamic System
February 24th, 2026 | 3-5 PM
VIRTUAL via Zoom
- Yaniv Yacoby, PhD: What can theory of stochastic processes tell us about suicidal thoughts?
- Don Robinaugh, PhD: Simple models and complex systems: Toward a systems science of mental health
Session 16: What Can Psychedelics Teach Us About Suicidality and its Treatment?
January 27th, 2026 | 3-5 PM
VIRTUAL via Zoom
- Sharmin Ghaznavi, MD, PhD: Psychedelics and Repetitive Negative Thinking: Insights from Clinical Reports and Neuroscience
- Franklin King, MD: A Primer on Psychedelics in Psychiatry
- Grant Jones, PhD: Examining the effects of naturalistic hallucinogen use on internalizing symptoms in a longitudinal sample of young adults
Session 15: Advancing the Understanding and Treatment of Suicide Using Digital and Computational Methods
November 25th, 2025 | 3-5 PM
VIRTUAL via Zoom
- Daniel Coppersmith, PhD: New Approaches to the Dynamic Measurement of Suicidal Thinking
- Shirley Wang, PhD: Advances and future directions for mathematical, computational, & digital methods in suicide research
- Evan Kleiman, PhD: Using Technology to Improve Inpatient Care in the Real World
- Christine Cha, PhD: Tracking how adolescents view their future life when they desire death
Session 14: Intervention Approaches for Comorbid Adolescent Substance Use and Suicide
October 28th, 2025 | 3-5 PM
Simches 185 Cambridge St, Boston MA, 02114
Floor 3, Room 3.120
- Christina Sellers, PhD, LCSW: Developing an Integrated Suicide and Substance Use Intervention for Adolescents in Substance Use Treatment
- Randi Schuster, PhD: Cannabis Use and Suicidal Ideation in Adolescents: Turning Research into Resources for Students, Educators, and Families
Session 13: Studying the Dynamics of Suicide Risk Over Time
September 30th, 2025 | 3-5 PM
William James Hall, Suite 1550
33 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA, 02138
- Alex Nikolaidis Konstas: Agent-based modeling to explore complex social phenomena and suicide in stigmatized populations
- Sean Toh: Adolescent Self-Esteem and Persistent Suicidal Ideation: Findings Across 14 years of Development
- Chloe Roske: Clinical AND Actuarial Prediction: Mapping a Path toward Synthesized Predictions of Suicide
Session 12: Emerging Scholars Spotlight: Practice-based Approaches in Suicide Prevention
May 27th, 2025 @3:00 – 4:30 PM
Simches 185 Cambridge St, Boston MA, 02114
Floor 3, Room 3.120
- René Lento, PhD: Implementation of the Stanley-Brown Safety Plan within the Electronic Health Record: The Impact of a Quality Improvement Training on Outpatient Psychiatry Department Utilization
- Jasmin Brooks Stephens, PhD: Advancing Culturally Responsive Approaches to Suicide Prevention in Communities of Color
Session 11: Generative AI and Mental Health: Ethical, Research, and Clinical Perspectives
April 29th, 2025 @3:00 – 4:30 PM
William James Hall, Suite 1550
33 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA, 02138
- Arjun (Raj) Manrai, PhD: The Clinical Reasoning Abilities of Large Language Models
- David Mou, MD, MBA: How generative AI is transforming mental healthcare delivery
- Benjamin Silverman, MD: Artificial Intelligence, Research Ethics, and Human Participant Research
Session 10: The Genetics of Suicide
March 25th, 2025 @3:00 – 5:00 PM
Simches 185 Cambridge St, Boston MA, 02114
Floor 3, Room 3.110
- Jordan Smoller, MD, ScD: Refresher of Genetic Methods
- Virginia Willour, PhD: An Integrated Approach to Understanding the Biology of Suicidal Behavior
- Niamh Mullins, PhD: Investigating the Genetics of Suicidality in the Psychiatry Genomics Consortium
Session 9: An Anatomy of Event Studies: Hypothetical Experiments, Exact Decomposition, and Weighting Diagnostics
February 25th, 2025 @3:00 – 5:00 PM
Harvard T. Chan School of Public Health Kresge 907
677 Huntington Ave Boston, MA 02115
- José Zubizarreta, PhD
Session 8: Interventional Psychiatry Approaches to Precision Suicide Therapeutics: Towards Novel Therapies and Novel Treatment Selection Algorithms
January 28th, 2025 @3:00 – 4:30 PM
VIRTUAL via Zoom
- Joan Camprodon-Gimenez, MD, PhD, MPH
- Benjamin Wade, PhD
Session 7: Advances in Suicide Risk Assessment and Prediction
November 26th, 2024 @3:00 – 4:30 PM
VIRTUAL via Zoom
- Kate Bentley, PhD & Chris Kennedy, PhD: [Joint Talk] Clinician Suicide Risk Assessment for Prediction of Suicide Attempt in a Large Healthcare System
- Yi-Han Sheu, MD, MPH, ScD: Continuous-Time and Dynamic Suicide Attempt Risk Prediction with Neural Ordinary Differential Equations
- Mhd Basheer Rahmoun, MD: Facing the Hurdles: Implementation Research in Suicide Prevention Through the Lens of Jaspr
Session 6: Causal Inference and Suicide Prevention
October 29th, 2024 @3-5 PM
William James Hall, Room 105
33 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA, 02138
- Miguel Hernán, PhD: Causal inference using observational data: Opportunities for suicide research
- Daniel Low, PhD: Estimating optimal responses for psychological support using generative AI and causal inference
- Chelsea Boccagno, PhD: Assessing the impact of lithium discontinuation on suicide risk in mood disorders: A target trial emulation using pooled randomized controlled trial data
- Joe Hakim, MS: Using machine learning methods to help with suicide prevention
- Jacob Jameson, MS: Optimal dynamic treatment regimes of evidence-based psychotherapy
Session 5: Advances in the Assessment and Treatment of Youth Suicide Risk
September 24th, 2024 @3-5 PM
Simches 185 Cambridge St, Boston MA, 02114
Floor 3, Room 3.110
- Taylor Burke, PhD: Characterizing Parents’ Reactions to Digital Suicide Risk Alerts & Implications for Developing Digital Interventions
- Richard Liu, PhD: Measures of suicidal thoughts and behaviors in children and adolescents: A systematic review and recommendations for use in clinical and research settings
- Christian Webb, PhD: Harnessing Smartphones for the Detection of and Scalable Interventions for Depressive Symptoms in Adolescents
Session 4: Suicide Prevention Interventions
April 30th, 2024 @4:00-5:00 PM
Kresge Building G2 (Ground floor)
677 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115
- Philip Wang, MD, DrPH & Rajendra Aldis, MD: Why do we need to study dynamic treatment regimes to prevent suicide?
- Ronald Kessler, PhD: The Department of Defense SAFEGUARD (Suicide Avoidance Focused Enhanced Group Using Algorithm Risk Detection) Initiative
Session 3: Real-Time Observation, Prediction, and Prevention of Suicidal Thoughts & Behaviors
March 26th, 2024 @3:00-5:00 PM
William James Hall, Room 105
33 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA, 02138
- Matt Nock, PhD: Real-time monitoring of suicidal thinking
- Daniel Coppersmith, MA: Mapping the timescale of suicidal thinking
- Shirley Wang, MA: Mathematical models of suicidal thinking
- Rebecca Fortgang, PhD: Impulsiveness and suicide risk
- Kelly Zuromsky, PhD: Sleep, daytime activity, and suicide
Session 2: Advancing Practice-Focused Suicide Prevention
February 27th, 2024 @3:00-5:00 PM
Simches 185 Cambridge St, Boston MA, 02114
Floor 3, Room 3.130
- Jordan Smoller, MD, ScD: Improving the prediction of suicidal behavior via machine learning on electronic health records
- Ronald Kessler, PhD: Estimating the effectiveness of hospitalization for suicidal patients
- Chris Kennedy, PhD: Enhancing MGB decision-making for suicidality care via commercial SDoH predictors
- Kate Bentley, PhD: Implementing new suicide risk prediction tools in clinical settings
- Suzanne Bird, MD & Abigail Donovan, MD: [Panel Discussion] Opportunities, challenges, and considerations in building and providing new suicide-focused tools for front line clinicians
Session 1: Causal inference & suicide prevention
January 23rd, 2024 @3:00-5:00 PM
HSPH, 677 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA, 02115
FXB Atrium (reception) and FXB G-12 (Talk Series)
- Miguel Hernan: Causal inference using observational data: Opportunities for suicide research
- T32 trainee flash talks: Presentation about their proposed projects. This will recur every few months