Dr. Michel Maziade is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and a Full professor of psychiatry at Laval University, Québec Canada with expertise in developmental studies of youth at genetic risk for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder. His research focuses on clarifying the childhood and adolescence trajectories preceding the later onset of these major psychiatric illnesses. Dr. Maziade conducts longitudinal studies that address both biological and preclinical risk

indicators. His laboratory found that children born to an affected parent carry in childhood and adolescence many indicators of brain dysfunctions that adult patients display which supports a neurodevelopmental etiology for the three illnesses. His strategy includes the investigation of retinal anomalies (ERG and OCT) along with other types of risk indicators in both youth at risk and adult patients, and the characterization of patterns of stability and change in retinal dysfunctions across time in a risk environment. The goal is to develop timely predictive algorithms that comprise retinal function and structure indicators combined with cognitive dysfunctions and other validated childhood preclinical traits intended to be easily and cost-efficiently translatable to the clinic in prevention.

He has received many awards. Among them the J. M. Cleghorn Prize from the Canadian Psychiatric Association in 2008 for scientific accomplishments, the Established Investigator Award from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD, Chicago) in 1993, and the Dr. Alexander Gralnick Award from the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA, Washington D.C.) in 2013 in recognition of his work on the childhood roots of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder. He was promoted as a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association in 2012. He also held a senior Canada Research Chair in the genetics of neuropsychiatric disorders from 2001 to 2016.