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Please join us in congratulating Martin Lubetsky, MD; Christopher Martin, PhD; and Kenneth Perkins, PhD, who have transitioned to emeritus status in the Department of Psychiatry. 

Martin Lubetsky, MD (Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry)
Dr. Lubetsky has served as an outstanding leader in the treatment of autism and developmental disorders since joining the Pitt Psychiatry faculty. He has been responsible for the conception and/or growth of each of the model programs within the UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital (WPH) Center for Autism and Developmental Disorders (CADD). 

Dr. Lubetsky’s clinical skills are exceptional, and families at CADD consistently request him as their psychiatrist. Throughout his career, Dr. Lubetsky routinely sought out the most challenging patients, and provided innumerable expert consultations to help young people stay in their homes and out of the hospital. Dr. Lubetsky has additionally held multiple clinical leadership roles, including medical director, module director, and director at CADD; for over two decades, he served as service chief of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and CADD.

In addition, Dr. Lubetsky has collaborated on research pertaining to psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents with developmental disabilities, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Autism Speaks, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare, and other sources. An outstanding educator, Dr. Lubetsky has mentored dozens of child and adolescent psychiatrists and neurologists at UPMC, taught extensively at the University of Pittsburgh, and was instrumental in the design and growth of the autism component of the Department of Psychiatry residency curriculum

His work has been recognized through multiple clinical achievement awards, including an American Psychiatric Association Silver Achievement Award.

Christopher Martin, PhD (Associate Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry)
Dr. Martin is a widely recognized expert in substance use among adolescents and young adults and has led or collaborated on numerous studies funded by the NIH. His most recent research was a National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)-funded secondary data analysis project, using multiple databases to characterize the concurrent and predictive validity of consumption-based screening questions among youth ages 8-20. Dr. Martin has published numerous peer-reviewed articles in top journals and been invited to present his research nationally and internationally on multiple occasions.

He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, Divisions 50 and 28, and served for many years as a member of the NIAAA expert panel on screening for Alcohol Use Disorders in Youth. Dr. Martin has served in editorial roles on multiple top journals in his field, as a reviewer on numerous occasions for NIH study sections, and as an advisor to the DSM-5 workgroup on substance use and related disorders. 

Dr. Martin is an award-winning educator, having received the Department of Psychiatry mentoring award, as well as a University of Pittsburgh Postdoctoral Association (UPPDA) Postdoctoral Advocate Award. He has instructed undergraduate, graduate, and medical students, as well as psychiatry residents, and postdoctoral scholars, served as co-director of the Department’s National Institute of Mental Health-funded T32 program on clinical research training in psychiatry, and has mentored numerous postdoctoral scholars and early-career faculty. 

Kenneth Perkins, PhD (Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry)
Dr. Perkins is an international expert in research on tobacco use, conducting studies to examine acute effects of cigarette smoking that may explain the persistence of tobacco dependence, and working to improve smoking cessation treatments. He has received numerous grants from the NIH and other sources, and his most recent research includes serving as multiple principal investigator on a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) U01 to develop a smoking cessation and relapse prevention drug targeted to nicotinic receptors in the brain.

Dr. Perkins has been recognized by multiple prestigious honors including a Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT) Ove Ferno award for groundbreaking advances in clinical research on nicotine and tobacco use. His receipt of an American Psychological Association Division 28 MED Associates Brady-Schuster Award highlighted Dr. Perkins’s work on the behavioral discrimination of nicotine via smoked tobacco in humans. He was elected SRNT president, and he is a fellow of the SRNT, as well as of the APA, and the Society of Behavioral Medicine. He has served as a standing member of the Behavioral Regulation, Learning, and Ethology NIH study section, and as an ad hoc member of numerous additional study sections.

Dr. Perkins has disseminated his research through multiple peer-reviewed papers and other publications, and he co-authored Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Smoking Cessation: A Practical Guide to the Most Effective Treatments, a treatment guide for clinicians, with a forthcoming second edition with Dr. Perkins as sole author. Dr. Perkins has been invited to present his research nationally and internationally on numerous occasions.

Dr. Perkins has taught across levels. He has served as a longtime lecturer and member of the course design group for the MS1 Behavioral Medicine course, and has taught a class on smoking cessation for nearly 20 years in the Department of Psychology. Dr. Perkins has served as a member of the training faculty for Psychiatry’s NIH-funded T32 postdoctoral research training program in cardiovascular behavioral medicine, mentored graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and served on numerous thesis committees.

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Lubetsky, Dr. Martin, and Dr. Perkins on their many achievements and in thanking them for their many valued contributions to our community!