Ted Liao, MD
Dr. Ted Liao directs Georgetown’s Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry Fellowship, in partnership with the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) and Washington Hospital Center (part of MedStar Health). He received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and his medical degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University before completing his residency in psychiatry at Georgetown University Hospital, where he also served as chief resident. Prior to joining the faculty at as an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry, Dr. Liao completed his C-L fellowship in the department of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine.
Dr. Liao’s activities focus on medical education and training. In addition to his role as C-L fellowship director at Georgetown, he serves as associate director of the psychiatry residency and co-director of the foundational clinical skills course at Georgetown University School of Medicine. He is the co-recipient of a CIRCLE grant for curricular innovation from Georgetown University School of Medicine and has received MERC (Medical Education Research Certificate) and LEAD (Leadership Education and Development) certification from the Association of American Medical Colleges. He has also served on the Residency Subcommittee of the Education Committee of the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry. Dr. Liao has been honored with several awards for teaching, including the Mother of Pearl Teaching Award from Georgetown University School of Medicine, as well as selection for the MedStar Health Teaching Scholars Program and for the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Teachers’ Academy.
Dr. Liao is the principle psychiatrist for the MedStar Georgetown Transplant Institute (MGTI) as well as for the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. He serves on MGTI’s liver transplant screening committee and has served on various other hospital committees, including the Council for Associate and Patient Safety. In addition, he supervises trainees on the inpatient C-L service at Georgetown and sees C-L outpatients with fellows.
Steve Epstein, MD
Dr. Steve Epstein is Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry of the Georgetown University School of Medicine and Chief of Service of the Department of Psychiatry of MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. In January 2016, he was appointed Physician Executive Director for Behavioral Health across the MedStar Health system.
He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale College and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. After completing a residency in psychiatry at Tufts-New England Medical Center, he was a fellow in Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry at Georgetown/Fairfax Hospital. From 1990 to 2000 he directed Georgetown’s Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry service and he became department chair in 2001. He currently directs Georgetown’s Physician-Patient Communication Program, and Physician Health Committee.
Dr. Epstein has conducted NIH-funded research and published extensively in the area of consultation-liaison psychiatry. In 2001, he was awarded an RO1 grant from NIMH to study primary care physicians’ decision-making in the evaluation and treatment of depression. He has also been principal investigator on two other NIMH grants in this area. He has been the recipient of four teaching awards from Georgetown psychiatry residents. In 2011 he was elected by his peers to the MAGIS Society of Masters Teachers of the Georgetown University School of Medicine. He is also co-chair of the Committee on Medical Education for the medical school.
Dr. Epstein recently served as President of the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry, the 1200-member national organization for Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry. He is also a member of the Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry Committee of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. In July 2015, he was appointed to a six-year term as a member of the Psychiatry Review Committee for the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.
Pauline Tsai, MD
Dr. Pauline Tsai joined the Department of Psychiatry at Georgetown in fall of 2016, with a focus on patients with chronic medical illness. She also supervises fellows, residents, and medical students on the inpatient consultation-liaison psychiatry service at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital and in the outpatient clinic.
Dr. Tsai completed medical school at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. She completed her residency training and a consultation-liaison psychiatry fellowship at NYU/Bellevue. She is board certified in adult psychiatry and consultation-liaison psychiatry. Areas of interest include cultural psychiatry, especially work with the Chinese-American population, clinical ethics, and collaborative care.
Waseem Abdallah, MD
Dr. Waseem Abdallah received his undergraduate degree from Al-Baath University in Homs, Syria. He subsequently completed a psychiatry residency at the Hamad Medical Corporation/Weill Cornell Medical College program in Doha, Qatar; after graduating, he stayed at Hamad/Cornell to do a consultation-liaison psychiatry fellowship there as well. Dr. Abdallah went on to complete a psychiatry residency at Howard University Hospital here in DC, where he served as chief resident. At Howard, he received their award for the Highest Performance on PRITE three years in a row, and was the recipient of a Diversity Leadership Fellowship from the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Abdallah completed his consultation-liaison psychiatry fellowship at Georgetown, and subsequently joined the fellowship faculty as an attending on the C-L psychiatry service at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, where he supervises fellows in addition to Georgetown psychiatry residents and medical students.
Haniya Raza, DO, MPH
Dr. Haniya Raza is a child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist serving as medical officer in the Psychiatry Consultation-Liaison Service in the Office of the Clinical Director in the National Institute of Mental Health Intramural Research Program at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Raza serves as Associate Director of the Psychiatry Consultation-Liaison Service in the Hatfield Clinical Research Center. Dr. Raza previously was the Medical Director of the Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders at Children’s National Health System from 2010 to 2018 and focused her clinical work on treatment of comorbid psychiatric disorders in children, adolescents, and young adults with developmental disabilities and complex medical conditions. She was also involved in teaching medical students, residents, and fellows.
Dr. Raza completed three years of general psychiatry residency training at Georgetown University. She subsequently did her 4th year of psychiatry residency, focusing on consultation-liaison psychiatry, in the OCD at NIMH. She subsequently completed her consultation-liaison psychiatry fellowship training at Georgetown and NIMH. Dr. Raza did a second fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry at Children’s National Medical Center. She is board certified in General Psychiatry, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry.
Dr. Raza’s research interests are in topics related to psychiatric disorders presenting in children and adolescents with developmental disabilities and complex medical illness. She is the recipient of Washingtonian Magazine’s Top Doctor Award in 2016 and 2017, as well as the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellows Distinguished Teacher Award in 2015. Dr. Raza is on the executive council of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Society of Greater Washington, serving as Secretary since 2016.
Maryland Pao, MD
Dr. Maryland Pao is the Clinical Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Intramural Research Program at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Pao is also the Deputy Scientific Director, NIMH. She serves as Chief of the Psychiatry Consultation-Liaison Service in the Hatfield Clinical Research Center and previously directed the Psychiatric Consultation-Liaison Service and Emergency Psychiatric Services at Children’s National Medical Center.
Dr. Pao completed pediatric and psychiatric residency training as well as a child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She is board certified in Pediatrics, General Psychiatry, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry. Her core research interests are in the complex interactions between somatic and psychiatric illnesses, including pediatric oncology, pediatric HIV, and other primary immunodeficiencies. Dr. Pao studies distress, suicide, and correlates in medically ill children. She has published more than 120 research articles and chapters, and co-edited Pediatric Psycho-Oncology: A Quick Reference on the Psychosocial Dimensions of Cancer Symptom Management (2015, Oxford), and helped develop Voicing My CHOICES™, a new advance care planning guide for adolescents and young adults.
Dr. Pao is the recipient of the 2012 AACAP Simon Wile Award for Leadership in Consultation. She is on the Clinical Faculty at Georgetown University, George Washington University, and Johns Hopkins University Schools of Medicine.
Deborah Snyder, MSW, LCSW-C
Deborah Snyder received her Bachelor of Arts degree, cum laude, from Duke University and her Master’s Degree in Social Work, Phi Kappa Phi, from the University of Maryland School of Social Work and Community Planning. She received additional post-graduate training at the Family Therapy Practice Center under the tutelage of Marianne Walters in Washington, D.C.
Ms. Snyder began her career at the George Washington University Medical Center’s newly opened Cancer Center in 1990 where she was charged with creating and implementing an outpatient psycho-oncology program. In 1992, she joined the NIH Clinical Center’s Social Work Department where she worked for over a decade as a clinician and educator. Ms. Snyder currently holds the position of Special Assistant to the NIMH Clinical Director where she participates as faculty on the Psychiatry Consultation-Liaison Service evaluating and treating patients with co-morbid medical and psychiatric diagnoses.
She conducts educational outreach initiatives at the interface of mental health and medical illness; works on NIMH Clinical Fellowship, Residency, and other training initiatives; acts as NIMH OCD liaison on patient safety and quality initiatives; and conducts research including in risk of suicide screening and implementation. She has received several awards including most recently the NIMH Directors Award (April 2017) for Significant Achievement for developing the Distressed Trainee Toolkit and the NIH 2017 CC Director’s Award for suicide risk screening implementation.
Joyce Chung, MD
Dr. Joyce Chung is the Deputy Clinical Director of the National Institute of Mental Health Intramural Research Program at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Chung is also the Program Director of the NIMH Clinical Fellowship and one-year accredited PGY4 Psychiatry Research Residency Program. She serves as an Attending Physician on the Psychiatry Consultation-Liaison Service at the NIH Clinical Research Center. Her educational background includes undergraduate and medical degrees from Northwestern University in Chicago. She completed her psychiatry residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and a research fellowship in medical anthropology at Harvard Medical School.
Prior to coming to NIMH in 2010, Dr. Chung was in the Department of Psychiatry at Georgetown Medical School, served as chief of the Psychiatry Consultation-Liaison Service at the Veteran Affairs Medical Center in Washington, D.C., was medical director of the Mental Health Care Unit at Georgetown University Hospital and Director of Psychiatric Research Training. From 2007-2008, she worked for the Director of NIMH to manage the responsibilities of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee for the Department of Health and Human Services. As Autism Coordinator, she facilitated the development of the first national strategic plan for autism spectrum disorder research.
Her own research has spanned interventions to overcome sociocultural barriers to mental health care among minority and underserved populations, ethnographic/mixed research methods, clinical trials for depression and posttraumatic stress disorders, assessment of mental disorders in adolescents and young adults, and psychiatric phenotyping of patients with rare genetic disorders and healthy research volunteers in clinical studies.