Seo Ho “Michael” Song, MD MBA DPhil (PGY4)

BIDMC Harvard Psychiatry Residency Research Chief Resident, 2025-26

Education

Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College (MD)

Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College (MBA)

University of Oxford (DPhil)

Research Interests

Sleep and wakefulness, biology of mental states, neuromodulation, noninvasive brain stimulation

Dr. Song began his career as a molecular/circuit neuroscientist and later diversified his expertise into computational approaches to analyze complex data structures. His main research interests are sleep and wakefulness, the biology of mental states, neuromodulation, and non-invasive brain stimulation. His current work involves engineering high-definition and noninvasive brain stimulation delivered during sleep, understanding the connection between brain regions affecting cognition, and transitions between mental states vis-à-vis sleep and wakefulness. His work also tests novel treatments to rescue disruptions in sleep architecture and cognition found in serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. His goal is to develop precision interventions that harness the therapeutic potential of restorative sleep to treat mental illnesses and fortify psychological wellbeing.

Selected Recent Publications (*co-first author)

Krone LB*, Song SH*, Jaramillo V*, Violante IR*. The Future of Non‐Invasive Brain Stimulation in Sleep Medicine. J Sleep Res e70071 (2025).

Park SH*, Song SH*, Burton FA*, Arsan C, Jobst B, Feldman M. Machine Learning Characterization of a Rare Neurologic Disease via Electronic Health Records: a proof-of-principle study on Stiff Person Syndrome. BMC Neurology. 24: 272 (2024).

Price GD, Heinz MV, Song SH, Nemesure MD, Jacobson NC. Using digital phenotyping to capture depression symptom variability: detecting naturalistic variability in depression symptoms across one year using passively collected wearable movement and sleep data. Transl Psychiatry 13(1): 381 (2023).

Awards:

2025 American Academy of Sleep Medicine Foundation Physician Scientist Training Grant ($100,000)

2025 First-Time Attendee Award, Sleep Research Society

2024 Outstanding Resident Award Program, National Institute of Mental Health

2023 Harry and Maida Solomon Award for Best Poster Presentation by a Resident, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

2023 Harvard Medical Student Teaching Award

Mark Kalinich. MD PhD (PGY3)

Education

Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Combined MD/PhD program)

Research Interests

Precision approaches to translational psychiatry, including digital psychiatry and biomarker development; catatonia, entrepreneurship

Dr. Kalinich started his research career developing targeted drug delivery systems as a biochemical engineering undergrad in the Langer lab at MIT. He then completed his PhD in the Haber-Maheswaran and Toner groups, focused on combining engineering, molecular biology, and bioinformatics approaches to develop blood-based diagnostics for the earlier detection and longitudinal monitoring of cancer. His PhD exposed him to the inadequacies of contemporary multi-omics analytics solutions, and inspired him to co-found Watershed Bio to enable drug discovery researchers to build better drugs faster for the patients that need them the most. In the clinical years of medical school, he found himself repeatedly drawn to caring for psychiatric patients. He fell in love with the work not only as a physician, but as a scientist, recognizing psychiatry as a field where precision and data-driven innovation had been underutilized yet held enormous potential. As a psychiatry research-track resident at BIDMC, he now works in the laboratory of Dr. John Torous to leverage digital phenotyping and machine learning to improve the early detection, treatment monitoring, and personalization of care for individuals with mental illness.

Selected Recent Publications

Luccarelli, Kalinich et al. "The Catatonia Quick Screen (CQS): A Rapid Screening Tool for Catatonia in Adult and Pediatric Populations." Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 2025.

Luccarelli, Kalinich, et al. “Co-Occurring Catatonia and COVID-19 Diagnoses Among Hospitalized Individuals in 2020: A National Inpatient Sample Analysis.” Journal of the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry, 2023.

Kalinich et al. "Applying machine learning to smartphone based cognitive and sleep assessments in schizophrenia." Schizophrenia Research: Cognition, 2022.

Patents

Wang A, Wang J, Kalinich M. “User interface controls for visual software modification.” US-12242823-B2. 2025.

Awards

2025 Honorable Mention Award, Outstanding Resident Award Program, National Institute of Mental Health

2025 Harvard Medical Student Teaching Award

Sam Powell, MD PhD (PGY2)

Education

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (Combined MD/PhD program)

Research Interests

Precision psychiatry, with a focus on leveraging large, multi-modal datasets to predict important outcomes such as treatment response, episode recurrence, and suicide attempts

For his thesis studies at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai MD/PhD program, Dr. Powell utilized human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived neurons to model molecular genetic mechanisms in schizophrenia, with a particular focus on three-dimensional chromatin structures such as promoter-enhancer loops. He was also involved in a student-run and faculty-supervised free mental health clinic, where he trained as a CBT psychotherapist and saw patients for seven years. He later went on to become the clinic's student director, chief teaching senior, and chair, and he also published several clinical research papers showing excellent outcomes in the clinic. In the later part of medical school, Sam served as a psychotherapist for a clinical trial testing a new psychotherapy for borderline personality disorder called cognitive reappraisal by distancing. As a research-track psychiatry resident at BIDMC, Dr. Powell will be conducting research with the Breakthrough Discoveries in Thriving with Bipolar Disorders Consortium, a large, prospective cohort and clinical implementation study focused on developing and testing clinical prediction models for treatment response and recurrence of mood episodes. At BIDMC, Dr. Powell also serves on the grand rounds subcommittee and will be a co-president of the Harvard Brain Initiative inter-institutional psychiatry research networking group.

Selected Recent Publications

Powell SK, et al (2025). Schizophrenia Risk Mapping and Functional Engineering of the 3D Genome in Three Neuronal Subtypes. Molecular Psychiatry (in resubmission)

Powell SK et al. Provision of Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Depression and Anxiety Disorders by Medical Student Trainees. Academic Psychiatry 2024;48:10-17.

Powell SK et al. Schizophrenia Risk Mapping and Functional Engineering of the 3D Genome in Three Neuronal Subtypes. BioRxiv 2023 Jul 19:2023.07.17.549339.

Awards

2025 Harvard Medical Student Education Award

2024 Graduation with distinction in research, medical education, and community service/global health

2021 Excellence in Leadership Award

2021 Semifinalist, American Medical Association Research Challenge

2021 Best Oral Presentation Award, Early Career Investigator Program, World Congress of Psychiatric Genomics

Melissa Hwang, MD (PGY1)

Education

Boston University School of Medicine (MD)

Research Interests

Neural circuitry of psychosis

Dr. Hwang was first exposed to functional neuroimaging through her role as a clinical research assistant at McLean Hospital, studying the neurobiological basis of auditory hallucinations in psychotic and trauma spectrum disorders. This inspired a deep interest in understanding brain functional connectivity, specifically the association between cerebellar-cortical abnormalities and psychosis symptomatology. She hopes to continue this work and explore how neuromodulatory techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation may provide a way to elucidate causal as well as therapeutic relationships between brain circuitry and psychosis.

Selected Recent Publications

Hwang M, Brady R. Neural Circuitry and Therapeutic Targeting of Depressive Symptoms in Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders. Am J Psychiatry 2024 Oct 1;181(10):858-60.

Hwang M et al. Auditory hallucinations across the psychosis spectrum: Evidence of dysconnectivity involving cerebellar and temporal lobe regions. Neuroimage Clin 2021;32:102893.

Chan SY, Brady R, Hwang M et al. Heterogeneity of Outcomes and Network Connectivity in Early-Stage Psychosis: A Longitudinal Study. Schizophr Bull 2021 Jan 23;47(1):138-48.

Yoelkys Morales, MD PhD (PGY1)

Education

Tufts University School of Medicine (Combined MD/PhD Program)

Research Interests

Global mental health and cross-cultural psychiatry. Specifically, the unique psychiatric challenges faced by displaced populations and the complex trauma responses to the immigration process and possible interventions

Dr. Morales became interested in implementation of psychosocial interventions during his PhD work where he led qualitative studies focused on the barriers and challenges faced by patients with a substance use disorder history or history of incarceration and their access to the standard of care while hospitalized. This interest was expanded during a global health rotation in Panama where he was exposed to many of the challenges face by displaced populations before, during, and after the immigration process. In addition, he has also worked on projects utilizing natural language processing to improve care for people who use drugs, implanted new practices for patients with HIV who are hospitalized, and worked with Dr. John Torous on the implementation of digital mental health interventions. I hope to meld these interests moving forward to implement novel strategies of digital health interventions and policy advocacy work to improve the care of displaced populations.

Selected Recent Publications

Davis KP, Morales Y et al. Critical role of growth medium for detecting drug interactions in Gram-negative bacteria that model in vivo responses. MBio 2024 Mar 13;15(3):e0015924

Morales Y et al. “They Just Assume That We’re All Going to Do the Wrong Thing With It. It’s Just Not True”: Stakeholder Perspectives About Peripherally Inserted Central Catheters in People Who Inject Drugs. Open Forum Infect Dis. 2022 Oct 19;9(10):ofac364.

Benrubi L, Sato T, Westgard LK, Zollo-Venecek K, Scorates B, Sweigart, Ridgway JP, Suzuki J, Morales Y et al. Sensitivity and Specificity of Natural Language Processing Systems for Identification of Hospitalized People Who Use Drugs. Open Forum Infectious Diseases 2025;olaf370.