On Monday, May 19, from 5:30 - 6:30 p.m., APA will host its 69th Convocation of Distinguished Fellows, which honors the achievements of this dedicated group of APA members, as well as the recipients of the 2025 Presidential Commendations and Distinguished Service Awards. Capping off the ceremonies is the William C. Menninger Memorial Lecture, which will be delivered by Siddhartha Mukherjee, M.D. In his address, Dr. Mukherjee will touch upon his extensive body of research, his experience as a physician leader, and the intersection of medical science and mental health.

About Dr. Mukherjee

Siddhartha Mukherjee, M.D., D.Phil., is a physician, researcher, and author, who serves as Associate Professor of Medicine at Columbia University and as an oncologist at the university’s medical center. Dr. Mukherjee’s trilogy of books (The Song of the Cell, The Gene, and The Emperor of All Maladies) has made a vast contribution to the public discourse on human health, medicine, and science.

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer earned the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, and The Gene: An Intimate History won international awards and was recognized by The Washington Post and The New York Times as one of the most influential books of 2016. Both have been adapted into PBS documentaries by the renowned filmmaker Ken Burns.

As a medical scholar, Dr. Mukherjee has conducted innovative research that signals a paradigm shift in cancer pathology and has enabled the development of treatments that disrupt current pharmaceutical models toward new biological and cellular therapies. He was among the first to make cellular therapies available in India, and among the first to begin developing AI-based algorithms to discover human medicines. His groundbreaking research is now being translated into a record number of concurrent clinical trials across the globe, spanning novel therapies for ovarian, breast and endometrial cancer, leukemias and lymphomas, and a variety of other diseases. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

A native of India, Dr. Mukherjee received his bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and was a Rhodes scholar at Magdalen College, University of Oxford. After graduating from Harvard Medical School, he completed his internal medicine residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital and his hematology-oncology fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Honoring APA Fellows and Members

The Convocation will recognize APA members who have been awarded the designations of Distinguished Fellow, Distinguished Life Fellow, International Distinguished Fellow, Fellow, International Fellow, and Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association effective January 1, 2025. Additionally, the new class of 50-year Life Members will be honored for their commitment to the APA and 2025 Award Recipients will be announced.