Leanne Williams, Ph.D., is a pioneer in personalized mental health care. The Vincent V.C. Woo Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, Williams is changing the way psychological challenges are treated and diagnosed, anchoring them to a patient’s unique brain patterns. Her work has brought a precision medicine approach to depression and other mental health concerns by sourcing treatments based on the patient’s unique biology, rather than just symptoms. It’s a topic she spoke about at DOC 2024 as well.
“One of the goals of using objective measures and data is to really get answers much sooner and expedite this process of finding the right treatment for the right person,” she says.
Williams, who also serves as the Founding Director of the Stanford Center for Precision Mental Health, notes that 90 percent of those experiencing depression have a “primary dysfunction” on one of six core brain circuits or biotypes. Right now, she says the primary approach to treating depression and most mental health illnesses is mostly through trial-and-error methods, rotating medications until one clicks. Even then, only about one-third of patients improve. Williams’ team uses fMRI scans to examine brain activity and uncover the patient’s biotype to try to accelerate the process, applying a treatment better targeted to that circuit.
Williams uses the analogy of a cardiologist scanning someone’s heart to find where chest pain may be originating. Once the circuit is identified in the brain through Williams’ method, clinicians can pinpoint “the treatment that will be most effective for you,” she says. Some circuits appear to have better response when treated with SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) such as Zoloft others to SNRIs (Serotonin and Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitors) such as Effexor, and still others to behavioral therapy.
This work has led to her co-founding Et Cere, a Stanford University spin-out turning this research on brain circuits into clinical practice. Her openness to talking about her own loss, losing her partner to depression several years ago, has also helped to destigmatize the topic and widen discussions around expanding treatment possibilities.
Williams earned her PhD from Oxford University, and in addition to her work at Stanford, she directs the PanLab for Personalized and Translational Neuroscience and serves as Associate Chair of Translational Neuroscience within Stanford Psychiatry. She also holds a joint appointment as Director of the Precision Medicine Core at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System MIRECC. In March 2026, Williams was tapped to lead the global Nature Precision Mental Health Commission, a group investigating cross disciplinary ways to identify new treatments, such as using AI and machine learning.
Williams is the author of the textbook, Precision Psychiatry, and has published more than 400 scientific papers, including her Lancet Psychiatry 2016 study that established biotypes for depression and her senior authored 2024 study in Nature Medicine that was the first to validate the six brain circuits linked to biotypes for depression using an AI machine learning approach.
Dr. Williams returns to DOC to discuss how brain circuit biomarkers are making personalized care a practical reality at this year’s gathering.
Please join us in welcoming Dr. Williams back as a member of our DOC 2026 Faculty.