Winner 2014: René Kahn, The Netherlands

René Kahn, MD, Phd (1954), is Professor at the Department of Psychiatry and Director of the Rudolf Magnus Brain Centre at the University Medical Centre Utrecht in The Netherlands. In 1987 he received a Fulbright Scholarship to study at Yale and subsequently did a Fellowship in Biological Psychiatry at the Montefiore Hospital and Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Subsequently, he moved to the Mount Sinai School of Medicine where he conducted schizophrenia research and became Chief of one of the research units. Prof Kahn has received many grants for his research concerning the origins and treatment of schizophrenia. His current research interests include neuroimaging in schizophrenia and the genetic dissection of complex traits in specific psychiatric disorders. He is editorial board member of Schizophrenia research, Schizophrenia Bulletin, Early Interventions in Psychiatry and European Neuropsychopharmacology. He has been Treasurer and Vice-President of ECNP and is currently President-Elect of SIRS. He leads a large EU-funded study called ‘OPTiMiSE’, on developing a treatment algorithm in first-episode schizophrenia.