Advisory Board

Francis G. Lu, MD

A professor of Clinical Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Francis G. Lu, MD, is also the director of the Cultural Competence and Diversity Program, Department of Psychiatry, at San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH), where he has worked for over 29 years. He is the founder of the Asian Focus Psychiatric Inpatient Program, which served as a model for five other focus programs serving black, Latino, women, gay/lesbian and HIV patients. In 1987, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) awarded these programs a Certificate of Significant Achievement.

John J. Norcini, PhD

John J. Norcini, PhD became the first President and Chief Executive Officer of the Foundation for Advancement of International Medical Education and Research (FAIMER) in May 2002. Prior to his position at FAIMER, Dr. Norcini worked at the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) for 25 years, working his way up from data analyst and associate in psychometrics to Director of Psychometrics. He held two senior positions at ABIM, from 1988 to 1997, and from 1997 until 2002.

Nyapati R. Rao, MD, MS

Nyapati R. Rao, known to his friends as Raghu Rao, completed his undergraduate medical education in India, and migrated to the United States for postgraduate training in Psychiatry. He completed his residency at Brookdale Hospital Medical Center in Brooklyn, where he was later appointed the director of residency training in psychiatry. Subsequently, he directed the psychiatry training program at SUNY-Downstate Medical Center, and is now the Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at NUMC, and the Chief Academic Officer at NuHealth.

Laura Roberts, MD

Laura Roberts, MD, is the Charles E. Kubly Professor and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin. She founded and serves as Director of the Empirical Ethics Group, a multi-site, multidisciplinary research team devoted to exploring clinical ethical issues in medicine.

Joel Yager, MD

Joel Yager, MD, is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado, and a Professor Emeritus at both UCLA and the University of New Mexico. His research has focused on eating disorders, primary-care psychiatry, medical professional development and education, practice guidelines, and mental-health-services research.

Jacob Sperber, MD

Jacob Sperber, MD, has been a psychiatry residency training director for eleven years, and is currently the Vice Chair for Education & Training, and the Residency Training Director in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at Nassau University Medical Center (NUMC), East Meadow, New York. In addition to overseeing the psychiatry residency, two psychiatry fellowships, and medical-student rotations from three medical schools, he heads the curricula for interviewing and for psychotherapies training, and lectures on the neurobiology of addiction. Under his leadership in 2007 and in 2013 the NUMC residency program twice received the maximum ACGME accreditation of five years, with commendation. He has also chaired or co-chaired many institutional committees, including the hospital’s Competencies and Curricula Committee, the APA’s IMG Institute, and the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry’s Global Psychiatry Committee. His is the founding Associate Director of the Von Tauber Institute for Global Psychiatry, www.vtigp.org.