Dr. Rice's current research interests include methods development in genetic epidemiology and family study techniques, and the collection and analysis of genome-wide association data on the affective disorders, schizophrenia, smoking and alcoholism.

Dr. Rice is the PI in St. Louis for the Collaborative Depression Study (CDS) a five-site study which began in 1978 to collectively follow 955 probands with affective disorders and to assess 612 of their families, and is PI on a multi-site case-control study of Bipolar Disorder and a co-investigator on studies of schizophrenia, alcohol dependence and nicotine dependence.

Another area of expertise is in the management and analysis of data from genetic repositories. Dr. Rice maintains the genetic database for the NIMH and NIDA Centers for Genetic Studies. The NIMH repository has existing genetic data on Bipolar Disorder, Schizophrenia, Autism, Major Depression and Alzheimer disease, and these existing datasets are housed in St. Louis.