Gary Small, M.D.

Chair, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health

Gary Small, MD, is Chair of Psychiatry, Hackensack University Medical Center, Behavioral Health Physician-in-Chief and the Hovnanian Family Foundation Chair, Hackensack Meridian Health, as well as Chair and Professor of Psychiatry at Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine. Dr. Small is an expert on brain health and aging and former president of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry. He is also a co-inventor of the first brain positron emission tomography (PET) scan to show the abnormal protein deposits in Alzheimer’s disease (amyloid plaques and tau tangles) in living people.

Dr. Small graduated UCLA phi beta kappa and summa cum laude, received his medical degree from the University of Southern California, completed a general psychiatry residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and a geriatric psychiatry fellowship at UCLA. Prior to moving to New Jersey in 2020, he was Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, the Parlow-Solomon Professor on Aging, and Director of the Division of Geriatric Psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, as well as Director of the UCLA Longevity Center.

He has authored more than 500 scientific publications and written a dozen popular books, including the international best seller, The Memory Bible. Dr. Small has received numerous awards and honors including the Jack Weinberg Award from the American Psychiatric Association and the Research Award in Geriatric Psychiatry from the American College of Psychiatrists. In 2022 and 2023, he was included in the NJBIZ Power 100 list, New Jersey’s leading business journal’s recognition of the top 100 influencers in the state. Scientific American magazine named me one of the world’s top 50 innovators in science and technology.