Carol A. Tamminga is an American psychiatrist and neuroscientist, focusing in treating psychotic illnesses, such as schizophrenia, psychotic bipolar disorder, and schizoaffective disorder, currently the Lou and Ellen McGinley Distinguished Chair in Psychiatric Research and the Chief of the Translational Neuroscience Division in Schizophrenia at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. She has been Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at UTSW since 2008. She is an Elected Fellow of the National Academy of Medicine. She serves on the advisory boards of the Brain and Behavioral Research Foundation and of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). In 2011 she was awarded the Lieber Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Schizophrenia Research. Tamminga led a study examining whether giving Prozac to fetuses with Down syndrome would improve the functioning of their brains. In her attempt to confirm psychiatric diagnoses biologically, she found "biotypes" or "clusters." Her current research involves mechanisms underlying schizophrenia, especially its most prominent symptoms, psychosis and memory dysfunction.
