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.