He was President of the International College of Neuropsychopharmacology 2008–2010, President of the Israel Psychiatry Association 2015–2018, and Organizing Chair of the World Psychiatric Association Congress on Psychiatry and Religion held in Jerusalem, Israel in December 2019[2] He has contributed editorials in the areas of treatment of bipolar disorder in 2007 and then in 2014 on antipsychotic treatment of bipolar disorder, on the potential of transcranial magnetic stimulation as a new frontier (1995) and on the future of randomised clinical trials (2015).

An oral history of his research contributions is available at the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology video archives[3] Prof. Belmaker received his BA from Harvard College in 1967; his MD from Duke Medical School in 1971; and was a Clinical Fellow at US National Institute of Mental Health 1972–1974.

Prof. Belmaker has researched the mechanism of action of lithium in bipolar disorder throughout his career[4] and focussed interest on second messenger systems in the brain, Biological Psychiatry, 1993, New England Journal of Medicine, (2007).

He was one of the first psychiatrists to study a continuum between the molecular genetics of temperament and that of bipolar disorder and edited a seminal volume.

He was one of the first investigators to see the potential for transcranial magnetic stimulation of the brain as a treatment for depression, the first to study it in animal models of depression, and co-edited the first handbook of this treatment for psychiatric disorder that was widely influential for many years.