Al Powers, MD, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry and psychology, has been named winner of the Research Excellence Award by the Schizophrenia International Research Society (SIRS).
The award will be presented at the SIRS 2026 Annual Congress in Florence, Italy, on March 25. Established in 2020, the award recognizes a mid-career researcher who has shown exceptional research in the field of schizophrenia research and has a promising research trajectory.
Powers is director of the Powers Laboratory and Medical and Associate Director of the PRIME Psychosis Risk Clinic at Yale School of Medicine. At PRIME, he treats individuals who are at high risk for psychosis, and his laboratory uses computational approaches to understand how information processing alterations contribute to hallucinations and other symptoms of psychosis.
“Our goal is to use computational methods as a window into the brain states and processes driving symptom formation," Powers said. "With these insights, we hope to develop interventions that can interrupt pathological processes before symptoms and disease states fully emerge."
Powers serves as principal investigator on several projects aimed at understanding psychotic symptom emergence, including in women undergoing the menopause transition, people who have been exposed to psychedelic drugs, and, in a collaboration with Carolyn Fredericks, MD, assistant professor of neurology, older adults who develop dementia with Lewy bodies.
His laboratory is also working to understand how some people with auditory hallucinations can exert voluntary control over those experiences and how we might leverage that ability to develop new treatments for hallucinations.
Along with Professor Scott Woods, MD, Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry, he also serves as an investigator on the Accelerating Medicines Partnership for Schizophrenia (AMP-SCZ), a large prospective study of individuals at clinical high-risk for psychosis.
Powers earned his MD and PhD in Neuroscience from Vanderbilt University and completed psychiatry residency training at Yale New Haven Hospital. He has received awards including the Klerman Prize for Exceptional Clinical Research and a Burroughs-Wellcome Career Award for Medical Scientists.
About SIRS
The Schizophrenia International Research Society is an international organization dedicated to schizophrenia research, bringing together scientists, clinicians, and advocates to advance understanding and treatment of psychotic disorders.