William T. Carpenter, MD
Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, University of Maryland School of Medicine
William Carpenter’s major professional interest has been severe mental illness, especially schizophrenia, including phenomenology, etiology, pathophysiology, anatomy, and treatment.
Dr. Carpenter has made original and fundamental contributions in psychopathology, assessment methodology, testing of novel treatments, and research ethics.
His specific professional assignments include service on the National Institute of Mental Health’s (NIMH) Intramural Research Program Board of Scientific Counselors and as a consultant and reviewer for NIMH and the National Institutes of Health on many topics. He chaired the NIMH Research Scientist Career Development Committee and the NIMH National Schizophrenia Plan Committee on Treatment Research.
Carpenter has served as principal investigator on five NIMH-funded center grants and three National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression Distinguished Investigator awards. He provided expert testimony in the U.S. Government v. John Hinckley case on the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan, and in 1989 was a member of a State Department delegation that inspected the political use of psychiatry in the Soviet Union.
Carpenter was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1998. He has received many national and international awards, including the Schizophrenia International Research Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award and the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation’s Pardes Humanitarian Prize in Mental Health, both in 2019; the National Alliance on Mental Illness’ Mind of America Scientific Research Award in 2009; and American College of Physicians’ Menninger Award in 2013.
He is the editor-in-chief of Schizophrenia Bulletin, has served on the editorial boards of numerous journals, and has authored more than 400 publications. Carpenter earned his bachelor’s degree from Wofford College and his medical degree from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
