Dr. Pizzagalli received his M.A. (1995) and Ph.D. (1998) from the University of Zurich, Switzerland and did post-doctoral work at University of Wisconsin, Madison. From 2002-2010 he was a faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, where he served as the John and Ruth Hazel Associate Professor of the Social Sciences. In 2010, he was recruited to McLean Hospital to serve as the Founding Director of the Center for Depression, Anxiety and Stress Research, as well as the Director of the McLean Imaging Center. Until 12/2024, Dr. Pizzagalli was a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Since 2024, he is also a Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford, UK.  In 2025, he joined the University of California at Irvine as the Founding Director of the Noel Drury, M.D. Institute for Translational Depression Discoveries, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior and the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, and the Noel Drury MD Endowed Chair. He is also the Center Director for a Silvio O. Conte Center for Basic Translational Mental Health Research focused on the neurobiology of and novel treatment targets for depression.

The main goals of his research are to improve our understanding of the psychological, environmental, and neurobiological factors associated with mood disorders, particularly major depression. To this end, he integrates behavioral, electrophysiological, neuroimaging, and, more recently, pharmacological approaches and preclinical models to investigate three putative endophenotypes of depression: anhedonia (loss of pleasure), increased stress sensitivity, and executive function deficits.

Dr. Pizzagalli has published over 370 papers and chapters and serves on the editorial board of 13 journals. He is the Editor-In-Chief for the journal Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience.

Among several awards, he received the Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychophysiology from the Society for Psychophysiological Research (2006), the Early Career Award from the EEG and Clinical Neuroscience Society (2007), the Anne M. Cataldo Excellence in Mentoring Award from McLean Hospital (2015), two MERIT awards from the National Institute of Mental Health (2016, 2022), The Stuart T. Hauser, M.D. PhD. Mentorship Award in Psychiatry from Harvard Medical School (2017), the Joel Elkes Research Award from the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (2017), a NARSAD Distinguished Investigator Award (2018), the Anna-Monika-Prize for Research in the Neurobiology and Treatment of Depressive Disorders (2019), the Gerald L. Klerman Senior Investigator Award from the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (2023), the Christensen Fellowship from the University of Oxford (2024), and a Visiting Fellowship from New College from the University of Oxford (2026). Since 2019, he has been a Highly Cited Researcher according to Web of Science (awarded to 0.1%, of the world’s researchers across 21 research fields).