Javier Escobar, MD, MSc, is a professor emeritus at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and the former associate dean of the school’s Office of Global Health.

Escobar’s research activities have included National Institutes of Health-funded studies about genetics of severe mental disorders. He was the principal investigator at Rutgers for the NIH grant “Colombia-U.S. Cross-Disorder Collaboration in Psychiatric Genetics” (2017–2022). This project examined genetic influences and endophenotypes in a special population in Colombia, South America. He also was co-investigator and mentor of a Fogarty-National Institute of Mental Health training grant in Argentina and has been involved in USAID global projects and other NIH-funded investigations for many years.