As an incoming M.D. candidate at Stanford School of Medicine, I am deeply committed to advancing personalized medicine and precision psychiatry—emerging fields that integrate neuro-imaging, data science, multi-omics, and longitudinal behavioral tracking (e.g., with smart watches/FitBit) to tailor mental and physical health interventions.

Attending the Hong Kong Laureate Forum presents a unique opportunity to engage with leading minds in neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and molecular medicine—all fields that sit at the cross-roads of what I want to achieve in my career. I have found that my most innovative ideas stem from interdisciplinary conversations, and I am eager to exchange insights at the Forum with researchers whose expertise complements my own and learn new methods not-yet used in medicine.

Lastly, I want to use this opportunity to find new collaborations in industry and academia across the ocean. My previous work with Deep Longevity, a Hong Kong-based biotech company developing AI-driven psychosocial risk prediction tools, exposed me to the island’s exciting cutting-edge innovation ecosystem. This experience inspired my interest in fostering industry-academic partnerships between Hong Kong and Silicon Valley, accelerating real-world applications of precision medicine, which I hope to forge and establish as an attendee in the conference.

Michael Snyder, PhD

Ariel Ganz, PhD

Letter-of-Rec_Ariel-copy.pdf

Mental illness –and depression, in particular– is the leading cause of disability worldwide. In fact, severe depression is more disabling than a cancer diagnosis, yet our ability to diagnose, treat, and rehabilitate these patients is lagging behind nearly every other field of medicine. Yet psychiatry is at a turning-point, moving from symptom-based approaches to precision medicine, promising the treatment personalization and outcome prediction that has not been possible before. As an incoming physcian-scientist at Stanford, I focus on translating promising precision psychiatry approaches into the clinic, briding the gap between rigorous research, real-world practice, and reverse translation.
Between Stanford and Cambridge, I focused on finding novel neuroimaging and molecular biomarkers that predict treatment response/remission for anxiety and depression.
Furthermore, I am also very interested in the effects of mental illness on aging, long-term health, and death - a phenomenon I called “psychogenetic aging” - for which I co-authored a highly-cited publication (Almetric: 500) and have given various mass media interviews.

Indeed, as an interdisciplinary researcher, I yearn to join The Hong Kong Laureate Forum to engage with young pioneers across diverse disciplines –neuroscience, computational modeling, and regenerative medicine– exchange ideas, and forge collaborations that will redefine the future of health.