Spotlight on Dr. Simon Young
In this week’s Spotlight, we would like to highlight Dr. Simon Young who will be setting his sights on a well-deserved retirement as Emeritus Professor after 42 years with the McGill Department of Psychiatry.
Dr. Young began his productive McGill career in 1971 as a Post-Doctoral Fellow. He was appointed an Assistant Professor in 1975 and Full Professor in 1987. He has made exceptional contributions to research, teaching and administration, authoring approximately 230 referred papers and over 50 editorials and comments.
Dr. Young has taught medical students and undergraduates in several departments and was a member of the committees overseeing undergraduate medical education at the departmental level for 31 years and at the faculty level for 10 years. He supervised dozens of graduate students, residents and fellows, the majority of whom now have successful academic careers and served as a valuable mentor to tenure-track faculty in the department.
Dr. Young served on numerous committees both nationally and internationally. Of note, he served on grant committees for 12 years, and was President of the Canadian College of Neuropsychopharmacology. He was Editor-in-Chief or Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience for 11 years during which time it became fully open access and its impact factor rose from 2.6 to 6.2, the highest of any fully open access journal in both neuroscience and psychiatry. He also served on advisory panels for both the Canadian and US governments.
His accomplishments are rivaled only by his unswerving determination and dedication. While resting does not seem to be in his immediate plans, we wish him a happy and wonderful retirement as Emeritus Professor.
“The essence of a university is the community of scholars and students. I have been very fortunate in my role in that community, to have taught undergraduate and medical students who asked challenging questions, to have supervised graduate students and fellows who carried out studies I knew I could not do, and to have published with nearly 50 faculty at McGill who introduced me to many new ideas and novel ways of approaching problems. In retirement my granddaughter will have to take on a greater role in keeping me mentally stimulated, and fortunately she seems to be fully capable of doing so.”- Simon Young
**The “Spotlight” is an on-going departmental news capsule which spotlights a member of our faculty, their involvements and accomplishments. Should you wish to nominate someone for the series, please submit to communications.psychiatry [at] mcgill.ca () **