Mr. Robert Roskamp, a Longboat Key philanthropist and developer of senior living facilities and specialized homes for emotionally disabled adults, generously provided funds to the University of South Florida to create the Roskamp Chair in Biological Psychiatry in March 1995. Dr. Michael Mullan, a USF Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, was appointed as the first Roskamp Chair, and held this position until his resignation from USF in 2003.

Shortly after the generous endowment of the Chair, in June 1998 Mr. Roskamp gave an additional gift to the University of South Florida to create the Robert & Diane Roskamp Institute for Research in Alzheimer's Disease and Other Neuropsychiatric Disorders at the USF College of Medicine. The Institute was to be located in vacant space on the second floor of the USF Psychiatry Center and directed by the Head of the Roskamp Research Laboratory. Further donations to support this Laboratory were generously provided by the Warner Lambert Company and Boots Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and these funds were coalesced to support the Roskamp Chair in Biological Psychiatry in 2007. An active recruitment is currently underway.