Prabhat Kunwar is a senior group leader in the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. His research focuses on understanding the neural circuit mechanisms underlying mental illnesses and translating those discoveries into novel therapeutics. His team’s broad interrelated research directions are: (1) to understand which circuits and brain processes are affected by risk genes associated with mental illnesses and how (e.g., genes uncovered in the SCHEMA consortium study), (2) to discover key circuit nodes and underlying pathways and molecules that can be altered to reverse the course of disease, and (3) to develop drug discovery projects based on the targets (molecules and pathways) that are directly or indirectly implicated by human genetics and disease mechanisms. His group uses multi-disciplinary approaches: neural circuit technologies, such as optical imaging, optogenetics, chemogenetics, and viral tracing; genomics, such as single cell transcriptomics; and evaluating quantitative behaviors and pharmacology in animal models.