Patricia Pelufo Silveira, MD, PhD

• Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, McGill University
• Associate Director of McGill’s Integrated Program in Neuroscience (IPN)
• Researcher and Lead for the Environmental Adversity, Neurodevelopment and Mental Health research group, Douglas Mental Health University Institute
• Scientific Director, Ludmer Centre for Neuroinformatics & Mental Health

Patricia Pelufo Silveira, MD, PhD, is a professor in the department of Psychiatry, and is the associate director of the McGill Integrated Program in Neuroscience (IPN). Her research focuses on how perinatal and early-childhood environments can shape and modulate both health and disease across the lifespan, into old age. Dr. Silveira's aim is to identify genetic/epigenetic markers that interact with environmental adversities in childhood, modifying behaviours (impulsivity, sensitivity to reward, food choices) that ultimately affect healthy growth and neurodevelopment and increasing an individual’s risk for developing chronic diseases and mental illnesses as they age.

Dr. Silveira created a biologically informed methodology, expression-based Polygenic Risk Scores (ePRS). Her unique approach focuses on gene networks, rather than individual genes or single-genetic-variations, and enables the exploitation of under-utilised genetic data collected by most studies exploring the impact of early life adversities. 

• Visit Google Scholar page for a list of publications.
• Visit Research Gate for ongoing research;
• Visit Github for a list of functional genomic resources.