Dr. C. Neill Epperson MD

C. Neill Epperson, MD, is the Robert Freedman Endowed Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado School of Medicine-Anschutz Medical Campus (CU-AMC) where she is also the Executive Director of the Helen E. and Arthur Johnson Depression Center. Before being recruited to CU-Anschutz, Dr. Epperson served as the founder and director of both the Penn Center for Women’s Behavioral Wellness and Penn PROMOTES, Research on Sex and Gender in Health at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia where she was a tenured Professor of Psychiatry, with a secondary appointment in Obstetrics and Gynecology. Dr. Epperson received her medical degree at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed her postdoctoral and research training in psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, where she rose to the level of associate professor before her recruitment to the University of Pennsylvania in 2009.

Dr. Epperson is internationally known for her unique lifespan approach to women’s reproductive and behavioral health in her clinical, teaching, leadership and scholarly endeavors. Dr. Epperson’s body of research has led to a greater appreciation of the impact of gonadal steroids on brain structure and function and the importance of considering reproductive status and sex in all biomedical research. In addition, Dr. Epperson’s research demonstrates that childhood adversity has an enduring impact on physiologic responses during times of hormonal fluctuation as well as gonadal steroid effects on brain and behavior. Dr. Epperson’s research has been consistently funded by the National Institutes of Health for more than 2 decades. She is a productive mentor and independent investigator with more than 200 peer-reviewed publications and presentations.