Dr. Holly Hamilton is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UCSF and a Staff Clinical Research Psychologist at the San Francisco VA Health Care System. Dr. Hamilton originally joined BIEEGL with support from the VA Sierra Pacific Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC) Advanced Fellowship in Mental Illness Research and Treatment. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from New York University and received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles after completing a clinical internship at the San Francisco VA.
Dr. Hamilton’s research broadly focuses on the neurobiological mechanisms associated with the symptoms and course of schizophrenia. Her current VA-funded research uses multimodal neuroimaging methods to examine basic mechanisms of deficient neuroplasticity in schizophrenia, with the goal of identifying new mechanistic targets that will facilitate the development of novel interventions targeting cognitive deficits. She is also interested in characterizing EEG biomarkers that predict vulnerability for psychosis onset and other clinical outcomes in individuals with the psychosis risk syndrome. Dr. Hamilton is a licensed psychologist specializing in cognitive behavioral and recovery-oriented therapies for psychosis and other serious mental illnesses.