Susanna Fryer

Susanna Fryer, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine and a member of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences. Her research focuses on understanding neural mechanisms underlying psychiatric disorders, particularly depression and schizophrenia, with emphasis on reward processing and neural biomarkers.

Education:

• Stanford University - B.A. in Human Biology
• SDUS/UCSF Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology - PhD (2009) with subfield in neuropsychology
• San Francisco VA Medical Center - Clinical Psychology Internship (2009)

Dr. Fryer's research centers on neural mechanisms of reward processing across psychiatric disorders, with particular focus on identifying neural biotypes related to depression subtypes, suicide risk, and treatment response. Her work integrates electrophysiology, neuroimaging, and clinical assessment to develop biomarkers that can predict clinical outcomes and guide personalized treatment approaches. She has pioneered research on how reward system neurobiology differs across depression and schizophrenia, and how these neural signatures relate to specific symptom dimensions like anhedonia and negative symptoms.

Her recent publications demonstrate a strong trajectory toward translational neuroscience, with increasing focus on how neural biomarkers can inform treatment selection and predict response to interventions like ketamine and non-invasive brain stimulation. Her work spans multiple methodologies including EEG, fMRI, and multimodal approaches to capture the complexity of reward processing abnormalities across diagnostic boundaries.

Dr. Fryer is currently recruiting for postdoctoral research fellows and trainee projects involving medical students, residents, and graduate students. She has served as Principal Investigator on multiple NIH and VA-funded grants totaling millions of dollars, including studies on reward processing in depression and schizophrenia, electrophysiology of reward systems, and neural biomarkers related to suicide risk. Her most significant current projects include 'Using electrophysiology to index non-invasive brain stimulation effects on reward system neurobiology in depression' (NIH R21MH127432) and 'Reward processing and depressive subtypes: Identifying neural biotypes related to suicide risk, resilience, and treatment response' (NIH I01CX001980 and VA CX001980).

Her research is conducted within the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, where she collaborates extensively with a multidisciplinary team including Daniel Mathalon, Judith Ford, Rachel Loewy, Jessica Hua, and Samantha Abram. These collaborations span multiple institutions and leverage large datasets from both clinical and at-risk populations.