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Physician · Scientist · Interventionalist

About
Elliot

MD/PhD · Psychiatry · Neuromodulation · MGH–McLean
Background
"Everyone is someone to someone — the mind is not a machine to fix, but a person to understand."

I am a physician-scientist completing a dual MD/PhD program at Case Western Reserve University. My PhD, completed at Stony Brook University, is in Biochemistry and Structural Biology — I spent six years characterizing the atomic architecture of amyloid-β plaques in Alzheimer's disease and cerebral amyloid angiopathy. That work was a path to healing, not an end in itself.

In June 2026 I begin psychiatry residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and McLean Hospital. The trajectory — from molecular structure to circuit, from bench to bedside — has always been organized around a single question: how do we preserve the continuity of a self when the brain begins to fail it?

I am drawn to the places where science reaches its limits and the clinical question becomes also a philosophical one. What does it mean to modify a memory? To stimulate a mood? To intervene in the experience of a self?

Clinical Focus

My clinical interests center on interventional psychiatry — TMS, ECT, ketamine, and emerging neurostimulation modalities for treatment-resistant conditions. I am particularly interested in moving away from population-level protocols toward patient-specific stimulation informed by neuroimaging and biomarkers.

Alongside this, I maintain a deep commitment to psychoanalytic and relational frameworks. These are not in tension with neuromodulation — they offer complementary maps of the same territory. My training at MGH–McLean is one of the few programs where circuit-based psychiatry and analytic rigor genuinely coexist.

I also co-founded HyperCase, a university-wide interdisciplinary biotechnology accelerator at CWRU, connecting medical, engineering, law, and business students with clinical partners at Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, and MetroHealth.

2022–2026
Doctor of Medicine (MD)
Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland OH
2019–2022
Doctor of Philosophy — Biochemistry & Structural Biology
Stony Brook University — Thesis: Structure of vascular amyloid-β from sporadic and familial cerebral amyloid angiopathy
2017–2018
Master of Science — Neurobiology & Behavior
Stony Brook University — Thesis: Structural insight into amyloid-β vascular deposits and the influence of copper on antiparallel stability
2013–2017
Bachelor of Science — Biochemistry (Honors, Presidential Scholar)
Stony Brook University — Elof Carlson Award for most scholarly contribution through thesis
2009–2013
Accelerated Program
Lycée Gerson, Paris, France
2026–
Psychiatry Residency (PGY-1)
Massachusetts General Hospital – McLean Hospital, Boston MA · Harvard Medical School affiliate program; one of the nation's premier research-intensive psychiatry training programs integrating interventional, psychodynamic, and neuroscience-based approaches.
2023–
Research — Functional Neuroanatomy & Neuromodulation
Case Western Reserve / University Hospital · PI: Andrew Crofton, PhD & Michael Staudt, MD · Neuromodulatory interventions for memory and cognitive deficits
2023
Research — Brain Modulation Lab
Massachusetts General Hospital / MIT · PI: Mark Richardson, MD, PhD · Determinants of patient responsiveness to RNS for resistant epilepsy
2022–2023
Research — Functional Neural Interface Lab
Case Western Reserve / MetroHealth · PI: Dustin Tyer, PhD & Jonathan Baskin, MD · Carotid sinus stimulation for resistant hypertension
2020
EMT-B Certification
Suffolk County Community College, Suffolk NY
TMS · ECT · DBS
Transcranial magnetic stimulation, electroconvulsive therapy, and deep brain stimulation for treatment-resistant psychiatric illness.
Memory & Selfhood
How neuromodulation alters episodic and declarative memory — and what those alterations mean for personal identity and continuity of self.
Circuit Psychiatry
Biomarker-guided, patient-specific brain stimulation informed by structural and functional neuroimaging data.
Psychoanalysis
Relational and psychodynamic frameworks as necessary counterweights to mechanistic neuroscience — complementary maps of the same territory.
2024
An electrostatic cluster guides Aβ40 fibril formation in sporadic and Dutch-type cerebral amyloid angiopathy
Crooks EJ et al. · Journal of Biological Chemistry · doi 10.1016/j.jsb.2024.108092
2020
Copper stabilizes antiparallel β-sheet fibrils of the amyloid-β 40 Iowa variant
Crooks EJ et al. · Journal of Biological Chemistry · 295(27):8914–8927
2024
In My Hands
Crooks EJ · Stethos Humanities Publication — Cleveland Clinic · Poem