About the Poitras Center

Our Mission

The goal of the Poitras Center for Psychiatric Disorders Research is to advance human health through brain research by addressing psychiatric disorders that have a devastating impact on patients, their families, and society at large.

Our Approach

One in every eight people—970 million globally—live with mental illness, according to the World Health Organization, with depression and anxiety being the most common mental health conditions worldwide. Existing therapies for complex psychiatric disorders like depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia have limitations, and federal funding to address these shortcomings is growing increasingly uncertain.

To address this gap, Patricia and James Poitras ’63 established the Poitras Center for Psychiatric Disorders Research in 2007, with the goal of improving human health by addressing the root causes of complex brain disorders.

The center supports research at the McGovern Institute and collaborative projects with institutions such as the Broad Institute, McLean Hospital, Mass General Brigham and other clinical research centers. Since its establishment in 2007, the center has enabled advances in psychiatric research including the development of a machine learning “risk calculator” for bipolar disorder, the use of brain imaging to predict treatment outcomes for anxiety, and studies demonstrating that mindfulness can improve mental health in adolescents.

In 2025, the center launched an ambitious set of new projects with the goal of uniting neuroscientists, clinicians, and computational experts to probe underpinnings of complex psychiatric disorders including schizophrenia, anxiety, and depression. These efforts reflect the center’s core mission: to speed scientific discovery and therapeutic innovation in the field of psychiatric brain disorders research.

Our Founders

The decision to establish the Poitras Center for Psychiatric Disorders Research came to Patricia and James Poitras shortly after hearing Robert Desimone address a meeting of the McGovern Institute Leadership Board in 2006. There, Desimone described a long-range plan for the future of the Institute and the creation of a new initiative for brain disease and mental illness.

“We were pleased with this newly stated purpose to bring basic research into practice. We had decided many years ago that our philanthropic efforts would be directed towards psychiatric research. We could not have imagined then that this perfect synergy between research at MIT’s McGovern Institute and our own philanthropic goals would develop,” recalls James Poitras, a 1963 MIT alumnus with a degree in electrical engineering.

“After hearing Bob, we talked with Pat and Lore McGovern over dinner,” Patricia explains, “and realized we could help make this happen faster than even they had hoped. We are very hopeful for the future.”

In 2007, the Poitrases committed $20 million to support research on major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders at the center. In the fall of 2018, the Poitrases further grew the center by establishing the Poitras Catalyst Fund, which fuels the development of novel CRISPR and gene engineering technologies in the labs of Feng Zhang and Guoping Feng. In 2025, they committed $8 million to launch pioneering research initiatives aimed at uncovering the brain basis of major mental illness and accelerating the development of novel treatments.

“Federal funding rarely supports the kind of bold, early-stage research that has the potential to transform our understanding of psychiatric illness. Pat and I want to help fill that gap—giving researchers the freedom to follow their most promising leads, even when the path forward isn’t guaranteed,” says James Poitras, who is chair of the McGovern Institute Board.

In addition to fueling research in the center, the Poitras family has gifted two endowed professorships—the James and Patricia Poitras Professor of Neuroscience at MIT, currently held by Feng Zhang, and the James W. (1963) and Patricia T. Poitras Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, held by Guoping Feng—and an annual postdoctoral fellowship at the McGovern Institute.

These generous gifts build upon the family’s legacy of philanthropic support for psychiatric disorders research at MIT, which now exceeds $46 million.