Psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and autism, constitute an extraordinarily high public health burden. Few novel treatments have emerged in recent years, because their aetiology is poorly understood. The recent development of new, high resolution, high-throughput research technologies, including large-scale genetic studies using microarrays and genome sequencing, high-resolution neuroimaging, neurobiology and medical/bioinformatics provide an opportunity to advance the field rapidly through the translation of knowledge on fundamental aetiology into benefit for the patient. TRiP is a joint initiative by five of the world’s leading psychiatric research centres, two in Europe and one in the USA with two emerging powerhouses of neuroscience research in China, formed to accelerate basic and clinical research into mental illness. These key research players will exchange state of the art research methodology and provide training in psychiatry research. The international dimension in TRiP directly addresses the IRSES action, which encourages long-term research collaboration between MS/AC and eligible third country partners. The participants are ideal partners, because of their world-class research expertise, complementarities, and track record of cooperation, which will result in enduring scientific exchange and collaboration between key players in the field in the EU, China and the USA. TRIP will harmonize state of the art research across the centres in order to tackle the most difficult research problems in biological psychiatry, allowing the harmonisation of phenotype measurements in patient populations, the development and dissemination of complex and advanced techniques and methodologies, the pooling of resources for direct comparison and combination of large datasets, the cross-disciplinary training of future leaders in this field and the translation of these findings for patient benefit, such as drug development and clinical genetics.