Biography
Jess Fiedorowicz is Head and Chief of the Department of Mental Health at the Ottawa Hospital and a Professor and Senior Research Chair in Adult Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Ottawa. He is a clinical investigator in the Clinical Epidemiology and Neurosciences Programs of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. Outside of his roles in Ottawa, he also serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Psychosomatic Research and as a member of the U.S. Food and Drug Association Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee.
He graduated summa cum laude from Marquette University and with Honors in Research from the Medical College of Wisconsin. He completed a medicine (transitional year) internship at St. Luke’s Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin followed by a psychiatry residency at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he additionally served as a chief resident. He completed a fellowship in the Clinical Neurobiology of the Major Psychoses at the University of Iowa and concurrently completed an M.S. in Clinical Investigation. He later obtained a Ph.D. in Translational Biomedicine and then a graduate certificate in biostatistics from the University of Iowa.
Jess arrived in Ottawa in August 2020 from the University of Iowa, where he was faculty in departments of psychiatry, epidemiology, and internal medicine and still holds an adjunct appointment. In Iowa, he was also the Director of the Mood Disorders Center and co-director of Workforce Development for the Institute of Clinical and Translational Science. His research focuses on the primary causes of excess mortality, suicide and vascular disease, in bipolar and other mood disorders. He values taking an interdisciplinary, team science approach to his work and has over 110 peer-reviewed publications. Clinically, he is board certified in psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and in obesity medicine by the American Board of Obesity Medicine. While in the U.S., he was an advocate with Physicians for a National Health Program and volunteered in the local free mental health clinic. He is pleased to be working in a provincial system that provides universal access to health care and doing so within the collegial and collaborative environment of The Ottawa Hospital with its commitment to practice-changing research.