Fedra Najjar, MD, Associate Professor of clinical psychiatry is the director of the neurodevelopmental disorder psychopharmacology clinic at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). She is also the associate medical director of the comprehensive assessment and treatment unit, an inpatient unit at UIC treating severely mentally ill adolescents who are in state custody.

Prior to joining UIC staff, doctor Najjar, was on faculty at University of Chicago as the director of the psychopharmacology clinic where she treated a wide of variety of psychiatric disorders in the child and adolescent psychopharmacology clinic, and she supervised variety of clinicians in the clinic treating a large number of patients.

Doctor Najjar came to the University of Chicago, from Brown University, in Providence Rhode Island. After graduating from the child and adolescent training program at Brown, doctor Najjar joined the Brown faculty as assistant professor of clinical psychiatry. In her time at Brown, doctor Najjar was the associate medical director of their child and adolescent inpatient units. During that time Doctor Najjar was also involved in NIMH funded clinical trials in psychopharmacology among them: the TORDIA (the treatment of refractory depression in adolescent) study, and treatment of Body Dysmorphic Disorder.

Doctor Najjar joined the University of Chicago (U of C) due to her interest in psychopharmacology clinical trials. She was the director of the clinical trials unit as well as the outpatient psychopharmacology clinic. At the U of C and UIC, Doctor Najjar was involved in multiple psychopharmacology clinical trials: the multicenter trials of aripirazole and ziprasidone in both adolescent schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Atamoxetine trial in adults with ADHD. Doctor Najjar was also involved in multiple psychopharmacological trials in Autism spectrum disorder. Among them is the arbaclofen trial sponsored by Seaside therapeutics. Doctor Najjar was the sub investigator in the study of fluoxetine in autism (SOFIA), and the investigator in the extended management and measurement in autism (EMMA), a fluoxetine continuation study in autism.

Doctor Najjar has multiple publications in psychopharmacology some of them: 

•    “Trends in psychopharmacology in a child psychiatric hospital from 1991 through 1998”. 
•    “An open label study of citalopram in Body Dysmorphic Disorder. 
•    “Efficacy and safety of citalopram in Body Dysmorphic Disorder”.
•    “Phamracogenetic Study of the Serotonin Transporter Gene and 5HT2A genotypes in autism”

Fedra Najjar graduated from the American university of Beirut, in Beirut Lebanon with a bachelor of science in biology, and medical doctor degree. Doctor Najjar pursued residency in psychiatry and completed general psychiatry training at the University of Rochester, New York. Then she joined the child and adolescent psychiatry training program at Brown University medical school in Providence, Rhode Island. Doctor Najjar stayed at Brown as a child and adolescent faculty then she joined the faculty at the University of Chicago in 2004 to continue her interest in psychopharmacology clinical trials then moved with the child psychiatry group to the University of Illinois Chicago in 2005