Maravet Baig-Ward, M.D., Ph.D. was born and raised in Bryan/College Station, Texas. She graduated magna cum laude from the honors program at Texas A&M University in College Station with a Bachelor of Science in Molecular and Cell Biology, a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Science, and a minor in Art and Architectural History, completing an honors undergraduate research fellowship and winning best thesis in her category. After graduation, Dr. Baig-Ward received a post-baccalaureate intramural research training award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, where she spent a year doing basic science research at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, looking at Tf1, a retrotransposon, as a model for retrovirus integration. She forged an individual graduate partnership program between Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine and the NIH, completing Doctor of Medicine and Doctor of Philosophy in Biochemistry degrees. In her NIH dissertation research, she investigated the role of Akap13 in the adult mouse heart by creating a tissue-specific conditional knockout mouse model. Her investigation of the behavior of another mouse model led to interest in psychiatry. After defending her dissertation, Dr. Baig-Ward did postdoctoral research at Johns Hopkins to further characterize the behavior of the Akap13 haploinsufficient mice she had worked with at the NIH. During medical school, she was involved in curriculum development, designing a fourth-year medical school elective experience at the comprehensive addiction treatment services at Inova Fairfax Hospital. She returned to Texas for her research track residency at UT Southwestern, where she is engaged in several clinical trials and has developed a screening instrument for recidivism risk in individuals with substance use disorder. She has held multiple leadership positions and chaired committees, as well as received national awards and scholarships, such as the APA/APAF Leadership Fellowship and Rappeport Fellowship awards. Outside her career in medicine, Dr. Baig-Ward is married with children and enjoys supporting her children in their extracurricular activities of competitive cheerleading and taekwondo and being actively involved in her church and community. She enjoys writing and has published in several different outlets and blogs, including the Washington Post and Medpage Today’s KevinMD, and is active on social media. She is committed to treating patients from a holistic perspective and providing psychoeducation to help reduce the stigma that often exists surrounding mental health care. 

Why UTSW?

"UT Southwestern has always stood out as a national center of excellence in both patient care and research. When I was looking for psychiatry residency programs, I wanted to make sure that I was trained at an institution with both depth and breadth of educational experiences, and UTSW easily fits that bill. I have a keen interest in seeing people of all ages and from all walks of life, and I wanted to make sure that my training program was able to facilitate a robust educational experience that truly reflected the population. UTSW allows residents to provide care for the underserved populations through its affiliation with the county hospital (Parkland) and other sites. UTSW residents are also able to rotate in many clinical settings that may not be offered in other programs including the VA, state hospital, and jail, among others. UTSW also offers the opportunity to specialize in different tracks to further develop interests in certain areas, such as interventional psychiatry, psychiatry and the law, and women’s health. In addition to the excellent biological and psychopharmacological training we receive at UTSW, UTSW also has a dedication to training exceptional psychotherapists. I knew that if I trained at UTSW, I would develop my skills as a well-rounded psychiatrist able to tackle challenging medical, therapeutic, and research questions. UTSW offers numerous fellowship opportunities after residency training, which thus sets UTSW apart from many other institutions."

Career Goals

"After residency, I will continue my training at UT Southwestern through a subspecialty fellowship in Forensic Psychiatry. It is my goal to develop a program of research at UTSW engaging in novel forensic psychiatry projects utilizing various strategies to reduce recidivism risk, build efficiencies and establish best practices for competency restoration, and develop novel therapeutic strategies utilizing interventional, psychotherapy, psychopharmacology, and other methods in populations involved in the forensic and criminal justice system. I am keenly interested in exploring the intersection of addiction psychiatry and forensic psychiatry. To this end, I will engage with the criminal justice system, the State of Texas, and non-profit and faith-based organizations to better understand and serve patients, mitigate risk, develop novel treatment strategies through cutting-edge research, and promote the health and safety of all our patients and their families. I ultimately hope to develop a statewide data repository that can be utilized across sectors for the research and development of strategies to better understand and facilitate novel therapeutic approaches in the promotion of the health, safety, and well-being of all Texans."