Michael B. First M.D., (1956-) is a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University, and is a Research Psychiatrist at the Biometrics Department at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and maintains a schematherapy and psychopharmacology practice in Manhattan, Dr. First is a nationally and internationally recognized expert on psychiatric diagnosis and assessment issues and conducts expert forensic psychiatric evaluations in both criminal and civil matters. Dr. First is the Editorial and Coding Consultant for the DSM-5, the chief technical and editorlal consultant on the World Health Organization’ s ICD-11 revision project, and is an external consultant to the National Institute of Mental Heatlh’s Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project Dr. First got his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University, received a Masters in Computer Science and a Medical Degree from the University of Pittsburgh, did his psychiatry residency at Columbia University, and did a fellowship in Biometrics Research under the direction of his mentor, Dr. Robert Spitzer.He was the Editor of the DSM-IV-TR, the Editor of Text and Criteria for DSM-IV and the APA’s Handbook on Psychiatric Measures. He has co-authored and co-edited a number of books, including A Research Agenda for DSM-V, the DSM-5 Handbook for Differential Diagnosis, and forthcoming the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 (SCID-5).