Dr. Leo Fontenelle

Biography

Leo F. Fontenelle earned his medical degree in 1995 from Federal Fluminense University (UFF), Brazil, followed by a residency in psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) from 1996 to 1998. He initiated a clinic research program focused on obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in 1998 in Rio de Janeiro. He completed his master’s degree in psychiatry from 1998 to 2000 and his PhD from 2000 to 2003 at UFRJ, where he has been a staff psychiatrist since 2002 and a faculty member since 2006. He served as a Professor at the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health at Monash University from 2015 to 2021 and became an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychiatry in 2020. In 2022, he was appointed vice-chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Legal Medicine at UFRJ. His research interests broadly encompass OCD and related anxiety disorders, employing both psychological and biological approaches to enhance understanding of transdiagnostic constructs, particularly 'compulsivity.' He has published over 280 articles and has received approximately 13,000 citations, with an h-index of 60. Fontenelle has been invited as a keynote speaker and actively supervises both PhD and master’s students in clinical psychology.

Research Interests