PSYCHIATRY
LONGEVITY
HEALTH
/robby
Robert Raeder is a medical scientist primarily interested in metabolic psychiatry, longevity, and health optimization. He is currently a Research Principal at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s (UPMC) Western Psychiatric Hospital, working within the Phillips Mood and Brain Lab under the mentorship of Professor Mary L. Phillips, MD, MD (Cantab). The lab spans three centers: the Center for Neural Circuit-Based Technology Interventions in Psychiatry, the Center for Research in Translational and Developmental Affective Neuroscience, and the Center for Translational Research Incorporating Metabolism. Robert's translational work combines neuroimaging, metabolic, and behavioral measures to elucidate how metabolic interventions, including the ketogenic diet and exogenous ketones, influence neural circuits implicated in psychiatric disorders, particularly bipolar disorder. His overarching goal is to develop a precision-medicine framework for psychiatry that integrates metabolic and neural biomarkers to optimize mental and physical health across the lifespan.
An avid runner himself, Robert also collaborates with Dr. Jeffrey Brown, lead psychologist for the Boston Marathon, to examine the psychological and physiological factors influencing marathon running. Their research aims to establish best practices in psychological care for marathon runners and to elucidate bi-directional links between psychiatric vulnerabilities and endurance physiology, including factors that may predispose runners to medical encounter risks in marathon settings.
Previously, Robert served as a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge, under the supervision of Professor Nicola Clayton FRS, where his work examined Bayesian aspects of autobiographical memory and psychiatric models of future simulation. Additionally, he earned an MSc in Psychology and Neuroscience of Mental Health from King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, where his research focused on traumatic memory processes in PTSD and their implications for therapeutic intervention. He also holds an MA from the University of London and a BA from Point Park University, where his early studies spanned basic sciences and the humanities.
Earlier in his career, Robert worked one-on-one with individuals to achieve evidence-based health outcomes through dietary interventions, with clients ranging from international supermodels to Oscar, Grammy, Emmy, and Tony Award winners, as well as military veterans, domestic violence survivors, and formerly incarcerated individuals. Using personalized strategies, he has helped clients lose significant weight and overcome chronic health challenges, while also supporting their efforts to publish books, launch businesses, earn promotions, start families, and live more meaningful lives.
/affiliations
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Featured: The Mind Diet
The ability to mentally wander through space, time, and into the minds of others is at the heart of human cognition, but it also forms the basis of storytelling. It is therefore vital that you enter the minds of some of the greatest thinkers in human history in order to structure your own thinking.
Professor Harold Bloom on why you should read great works:
“Because you will be haunted by great visions: of Ishmael, escaped alone to tell us; of Oedipa Mass, cradling the old derelict in her arms; of Invisible Man, preparing to come up again; like Jonah, out of the whale’s belly. All of them, on some of the higher frequencies, speak to and for you. We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are. Yet the strongest, most authentic motive for deep reading…is the search for a difficult pleasure. Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you, because it is, at least in my experience, the most healing...”
