M. Frampton Gwynette, MD, has been named Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine effective July 1. Dr. Gwynette graduated from the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) College of Medicine in Charleston, South Carolina and completed training in both Adult Psychiatry and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Dr. Gwynette specializes in autism spectrum disorder, and his research interests include brain stimulation as a treatment for anxiety and depression in autistic patients, pharmacologic interventions targeting irritability in autistic children, and the investigation of genetic markers for autism as Psychiatry Lead for the MUSC site of the Simons Foundation Powering Autism Research Knowledge (SPARK) study, the largest autism study to date. In addition to his research and patient care, Dr. Gwynette is passionate about teaching and regularly presents at national conferences on a wide range of topics including behavioral therapies for autistic individuals, the intersection of autism and technology, current research in the field of autism, and media portrayals related to autism. He is a Distinguished Fellow of both the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) and the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and has served as President of the South Carolina branches of both organizations. In 2024, he received the APA’s prestigious Frank J. Menolascino Award for Psychiatric Services for Persons with Intellectual/Developmental Disorders and Developmental Disabilities. Dr. Gwynette currently serves as Co-Chair of the AACAP’s Autism and Intellectual Disability (ASD/ID) Committee’s Training and Education Workgroup and its Policy Statement Workgroup.
Jiliang “Leo” Zhou, MD, PhD, has been named Chair of the Department of Pharmacology, Toxicology & Neuroscience effective July 1. Dr. Zhou comes to LSU Health Shreveport from the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, where he was a Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology. Dr. Zhou earned his Doctor of Medicine from Jiangxi Medical College in Nanchang, China, and a master’s degree in Cellular Biology from Zhejiang University School of Medicine in Hangzhou, China. He later completed his Ph.D. in Public Health at Zhejiang University School of Medicine, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in Cellular & Integrative Physiology at Indiana University. The focus of Dr. Zhou’s research is studying the mechanisms regulating the phenotype of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs), an essential cell type in the blood vessels that carry blood throughout the body and that plays a role in cardiovascular development, homeostasis, and disease. He is currently the Principal Investigator on a $2.4 million grant from the NIH’s National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. An active member of the scientific community, Dr. Zhou holds memberships in several professional societies, including the American Heart Association (AHA), Sigma Xi, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), the North American Vascular Biology Organization (NAVBO), and the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET).