Stephen Dager, M.D. is Professor of Radiology and Adjunct Professor of Bioengineering at the UW, and Adjunct Professor of Radiology and Psychiatry at the University of Utah.  He is Associate Director of the UW Institute on Human Development and Disability and previously served as Interim Director of the UW Autism Center.

After obtaining undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Nebraska, Dr Dager completed residency training at the University of Washington. He is a Diplomat of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and elected to the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. He has chaired numerous Scientific Review panels that include the Veterans Administration Merit Review for Mental Health, NJ Board of Governor’s Review Committee for Autism Research, and a Department of Defense Scientific Review panel. He has served on various Editorial Boards, including Archives of General Psychiatry and JAMA-Psychiatry. Recent honors include a Distinguished Investigator Award through the Academy for Radiology & Biomed Imaging Research and selection as a Distinguished International Scholar through the S. Korean Brain Pool+ Program.

Dr. Dager has directed NIH-funded research during the past 40 years that applies novel imaging techniques to investigate brain mechanisms underlying neuropsychiatric disorders. For the past 20 years, as UW PI of a NIH collaborative imaging network, he has longitudinally studied infants at high- risk for autism and, more recently, infants with Down syndrome. He has directed NIH-funded research investigating brain mechanisms underlying panic disorder and bipolar disorder.  Dr. Dager and colleagues have developed techniques to non-invasively characterize brain pharmacokinetics of medications commonly used to treat depression and anxiety in children and adults. A passionate consumer of caffeine, he also has investigated how caffeine affects the brain.