Effie M. Mitsis

Biography

Effie Mitsis, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. She is affiliated with the James J. Peters VA Medical Center within the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine as a neuropsychologist and is Vice Chair of the Institutional Review Board. Dr. Mitsis received her doctorate in neuroscience and neuropsychology at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York and conducted her dissertation research at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Mitsis completed one year pre-doctoral and three-year postdoctoral fellowships in neuroimaging and neuropsychology at Yale University School of Medicine and the Veterans Affairs Connecticut Healthcare System, West Haven campus. Dr. Mitsis is a past board member of the Medical and Scientific Advisory Council for the Connecticut chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association. 

At Mount Sinai, Dr. Mitsis conducts research in traumatic brain injury, aging and dementia within the renowned Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. She is currently funded with an intramural grant to use PET and magnetic resonance imaging to investigate history of traumatic brain injury and depression as risk factors for earlier onset of Alzheimer’s disease in individuals with Mild Cognitive Impairment, typically referred to as MCI. MCI is considered the very early or prodromal stage of Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Mitsis’s current area of focus, for which she is extramurally funded through the Veterans Affairs administration as Principal Investigator, is mild traumatic brain injury associated with blast exposure in combat veterans returning from theaters of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dr. Mitsis is actively investigating the cognitive and neurobiological consequences of blast-exposure traumatic brain injury in these veterans, and is initiating studies to investigate the association between prior head injury, genetics, and earlier onset of dementia, such as that typically associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Her findings have been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals and she has written chapters addressing research advances in neuroimaging in Alzheimer’s disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment. She is a frequent invited speaker at forums addressing Alzheimer’s disease, mild cognitive impairment, and traumatic brain injury, and is a member of several national and international organizations for the imaging sciences and neuropsychology.