Steve Hyman, M.D., is Provost of Harvard University and Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. From 1996 to 2001, he served as Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the component of the National Institutes of Health charged with generating the knowledge needed to understand and treat mental illness. Before serving as Director of NIMH, Dr. Hyman was Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Director of Psychiatry Research at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the first faculty Director of Harvard University's Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative. In the laboratory he studied the regulation of gene expression by neurotransmitters, especially dopamine, and by drugs that influence dopamine systems. This research was aimed at understanding addiction and the action of therapeutic psychotropic drugs .

Dr. Hyman is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. He is Editor-in-chief of the Annual Review of Neuroscience. He has received awards for public service from the U. S. Government and from patient advocacy groups such as the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and the National Mental Health Association.

Dr. Hyman received his BA from Yale College in 1974 summa cum laude, and an MA from the University of Cambridge, which he attended as a Mellon fellow studying the history and philosophy of science. He earned his MD from Harvard Medical School in 1980 cum laude.