As interim chair, Heru succeeds Freedman
Alison Heru will serve as interim chair of the Department of Psychiatry while the School of Medicine conducts a search for a successor to Robert Freedman, who is retiring effective Aug. 31.
Heru is professor of psychiatry and has been a School of Medicine faculty member since 2007. She has distinguished herself at CU as a researcher, educator and administrator, winning the Teacher Scholar Award from the University, giving dozens of invited extramural lectures and presentations, and writing or editing several articles and books.
She earned her medical degree from Glasgow University and completed residency and internship training at the University of Edinburgh and Brown University. Before joining CU, Heru was on the Brown University faculty as a clinical associate professor.
Freedman joined the University of Colorado faculty in 1978 as assistant professor of psychiatry and pharmacology and became chair of psychiatry in 2000. Last October, he was awarded the Lieber Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Schizophrenia Research by the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation for “pioneering research that examines the convergence between physiology and genetics in schizophrenia.”
In 2012, his book “The Madness within Us: Schizophrenia as a Neuronal Process,” was published by the Oxford University Press. He will continue as the editor of the “American Journal of Psychiatry,” an esteemed worldwide psychiatric journal.