Steven Reiss was educated at Dartmouth College as an undergraduate, at Yale University for his doctorate, and at Harvard University for his clinical internship at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He has published scientific and clinical studies on the co-occurence of intellectual disabilities and mental illness. This work has been recognized with five national awards, two for scientific research, two for national impact on clinical services, and one for national leadership, and received two certificates of recognition for volunteer work. In 1985, Professor Reiss and then graduate student Richard J. McNally published the construct of anxiety sensitivity as an early risk factor for Panic Disorder. Anxiety sensitivity has been translated into more than 35 languages and is used to help diagnose many thousands of patients throughout the world. Professor Reiss's theory of motivation is an expansion of some of the ideas underlying anxiety sensitivity to motives other than anxiety.