Rakesh Karmacharya, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, a physician scientist with appointments in the Graduate Program in Chemical Biology Program, Program in Neuroscience and the Department of Psychiatry He runs a basic science stem cell lab in the Center for Genomic Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and provides clinical care at McLean Hospital, where he is the Medical Director of the transdiagnostic OnTrack Program for First-Episode Psychosis. He is an Associate Member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in the Chemical Biology and Therapeutic Science Program and affiliate faculty at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.

Rakesh grew up in Nepal and came to the U.S. for college. He received an A.B. in Biochemistry from Harvard College, an M.S. in Molecular Biophysics from Yale University and an M.D. and a Ph.D. with honors in Biophysics from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. His graduate studies focused on quantum mechanics of proton tunneling in condensed phase. He did a year of internship in Internal Medicine at MGH, followed by residency in psychiatry in the MGH-McLean program, where he served as the Chief Resident of the Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder Program. He subsequently spent five years as a postdoctoral fellow in chemical biology under the mentorship of Dr. Stuart Schreiber at Harvard before starting his own lab at MGH.

Rakesh runs a research laboratory focused on using patient-derived stem cells to investigate the cellular and molecular underpinnings of psychiatric neurobiology, with a focus on bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. He is a recipient of the BRAINS award from the National Institute of Mental Health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar award, and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Clinical Scientist award.