Esther M. Sternberg

Esther M. Sternberg, M.D.

Dr. Esther M. Sternberg received her M.D. and Rheumatology training at McGill University in Montreal, Canada and was on the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, before joining the National Institutes of Health in 1986. Currently Chief of the Section on Neuroendocrine Immunology and Behavior at the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Sternberg is also Director of the Integrative Neural Immune Program, NIMH/NIH and Co-Chair of the NIH Intramural Program on Research in Women’s Health. She is internationally recognized for her discoveries in brain-immune interactions and the brain’s stress response on health: the science of the mind-body interaction. She has published numerous scientific articles, reviews, and textbook chapters in leading journals and has authored the popular books, The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions (W.H. Freeman & Co., 2000) and Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Well-Being (Belknap Press, 2009).

She has received numerous awards including the Public Health Service Superior Service Award, the Arthritis Foundation William R. Felts Award, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services PHS Staff Recognition Award, the FDA Commissioner’s Special Citation, and the NIMH Director’s Merit Award. She has been elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation and has testified before Congress. In addition, Dr. Sternberg was a World Health Organization Advisor and a member of the National Library of Medicine’s Literature Selection Technical Review (Medline) Committee. An invited delegate and speaker at Fortune Magazine’s Most Powerful Women Summit, Dr. Sternberg lectures and chairs conferences nationally and internationally, including at the Smithsonian Institution and the Nobel Forum at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, and was featured in the PBS Television Special “The New Medicine.”