Networks Board and Taskforce
Each ECNP Network is led by a Chair and a Co-chair. Chairs and Co-chairs of Networks and thematic working groups (TWGs) form the Networks Taskforce, which reports to the Networks Board and meets twice a year. The Networks Board guides the ECNP Networks.
Networks board
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Chair: Andreas Reif, Germany
Andreas Reif studied Medicine from 1993 to 2000 at the University of Würzburg. Having decided that he wanted to work in the field of clinical neuroscience, he obtained his doctorate at the Department of Pharmacology (Supervisor: Prof. Dr. H.H.H.W. Schmidt), working on the catalytic mechanism of nitric oxide synthase type I (NOS1). He subsequently specialized in psychiatry, where - from early on - he complemented clinical work with research projects. During his clinical education at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Würzburg, he joined the research group of Prof. Klaus-Peter Lesch, where he initially focused on the genetic underpinnings of emotions and studied those in animal models. From 2003 onwards, he shifted his focus to adult ADHD, which is still one of his major areas of interest and expertise. In the last 15 years, he has intensively studied the neurobiological basis of this disorder. In doing so, he became a member of a tight network of researchers from many parts of the world, collaborating in the IMpACT consortium and the ECNP Network ADHD across the Lifespan, both of which he co-founded and co-leads. His second phenotype of interest are mood and anxiety disorders - especially bipolar disorder, depression, and panic disorders. During his work at the University of Würzburg, he got promoted several times up to the level of Vice Chair. In 2014, he moved to Frankfurt am Main, where he took over the Chair position of the Department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy and established sections on Translational and Experimental Psychiatry. He serves in important positions on the boards of several societies, the most important ones being the DGPPN and ENCP. He currently coordinates the EU-funded CoCA consortium and is a work package leader in several additional EU-funded consortia. Andreas Reif has published more than 350 papers with a cumulative impact factor > 2.000 and amounting to an h factor of 61.
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Co-chair: Nic van der Wee
Nic van der Wee is a full professor of Psychiatry, in particular Biological Psychiatry, at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC). He combines clinical, research and educational activities. The research of his group encompasses the neurobiology, phenomenology, and treatment of affective and stress and trauma related disorders across the life-span, with a preference for multidisciplinary and translational approaches and with a special interest in resilience and vulnerability. He is member of the management teams of the LUMC research profile area Translational Neuroscience (LCTN) and the interfaculty Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC). He has authored or co-authored > 200 scientific articles and book chapters and supervised more than 15 PhD projects. He is involved in national and international research networks, including ENIGMA, and several EU projects. He believes that collaborative research is key to foster European psychiatry.
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Network taskforce
ADHD across the Lifespan
Chair: Barbara Franke, The Netherlands
Barbara Franke is full Professor of Molecular Psychiatry based at the Human Genetics and Psychiatry departments of the Radboud University Medical Center (Radboudumc, Radboud University, Nijmegen). She is also Principal Investigator at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour. At Radboudumc, she chairs the Division of Genome Research and the Radboud Research Theme Neurodevelopmental Disorders. She is an elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW), and of Academia Europaea. Her research is focused on understanding the genetic contribution to neurodevelopmental psychiatric disorders, especially ADHD and its comorbidities. Beyond gene-finding, her group uses complementary approaches (bioinformatics, iPSC-derived neurons, small animal models, neuroimaging genetics) to map biological pathways from gene to disease. She has obtained prestigious grants, including a prestigious personal Vici grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and several EU consortium grants. She coordinates the EU-FP7 Aggressotype consortium on aggression and the EU-H2020 European Training Network MiND on autism-comorbidity in ADHD; she also leads work packages in the EU-funded consortia CoCA and Eat2beNICE and is a member of the IMI2 consortium PRISM. She founded and coordinates the International Multicentre persistent ADHD Collaboration (IMpACT) and the ECNP Network ‘ADHD across the Lifespan’, is a co-founder of the neuroimaging genetics consortium ENIGMA, and leads ENIGMA’s ADHD Working Group and the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium’s ADHD Working Group. In 2018, she was elected to become a member of the Board of Directors of the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics (ISPG).
Co-chair: Josep Antoni Ramos-Quiroga, Spain
Josep Antoni Ramos-Quiroga, MD, PhD, is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and adult psychiatrist, head of the department of mental health at Hospital Universitari Vall d’Hebron (HUVH) in Barcelona, Spain. He is also professor of psychiatry at Barcelona Autonomous University and principal investigator at Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (VHIR). Professor Ramos-Quiroga is president of the innovation commission at HUVH, a member of the scientific committee of VHIR. He is co-chair of ADHD-ECNP Network, chair of the neurodevelopmental disorders across lifespan working group of the Spanish society of psychiatry and mental health and ex-chair of the neurodevelopmental disorders across lifespan section of the European Psychiatric Association. Professor Ramos-Quiroga has published more than 300 articles in the field of genetics, psychopharmacology and neurodevelopmental disorders (h-index: 63). He is also VHIR’s principal onvestigator in seven European grants (Horizon 2020) focused on treatment-resistant depression, ADHD and autism. In addition, he is a member of several international consortia related to mood disorders and neurodevelopmental disorders (IMpACT, PGC, ENIGMA and the ICASA and ADHD- ECNP Network).
Anxiety Disorders (ADRN)
Chair: Katharina Domschke, Germany
Katharina Domschke, MA, MD, PhD, is Full Professor of Psychiatry and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Freiburg, Germany. Her clinical and teaching focus is on anxiety disorders, depression, OCD and PTSD. Scientifically, Prof. Domschke is a renowned expert in genetics, epigenetics, imaging genetics and pharmacogenetics of anxiety, anxiety disorders and depression.
Co-chair: Simon Davies, United Kingdom/Canada
Simon Davies is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry, and Geriatric Psychiatrist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health/University of Toronto, Canada and an ongoing faculty member at University of Bristol, United Kingdom. He is interested in anxiety disorders in adults of all ages, and other common mental illnesses which affect the elderly, including depression and the behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia. His research training combined both biological and epidemiological approaches. As such, he has a Doctorate degree from Oxford University in Clinical Pharmacology relating to panic disorder, a Master’s Degree in Affective Neuroscience from the Universities of Maastricht and Florence and a Master’s degree in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He publishes on psychopharmacological, biological and epidemiological aspects of the above psychiatric disorders and their treatments. He has authored/co-authored over 90 scientific articles and book chapters. He is a strong advocate of pan-European and cross-national collaborative research, and has been a member of ECNP’s Anxiety Disorders Research Network since its inception in 2008.
Bipolar Disorders (ENBREC)
Chair: Mirko Manchia, Italy
Prof. Mirko Manchia is currently associate professor of psychiatry and director of the post graduate training programme in psychiatry at the section of psychiatry of the department of medical sciences and public health, University of Cagliari, Italy, and is adjunct professor of pharmacology at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. After his medical degree, he trained in clinical pharmacology (clinical residency), neuroscience (PhD), and psychiatry (clinical residency). Further, he completed a four-year clinical research fellowship in mood disorders at the department of psychiatry of Dalhousie University under the supervision of Dr. Martin Alda from 2009 to 2013. Prof. Manchia has developed his research interest on the study of clinical and neurobiological aspects of bipolar disorder, with a specific focus on genetics of lithium response and suicidal behavior. He serves in the editorial board of several international journals, is a founding member of the Consortium on Lithium Genetics (ConLiGen), and is part of the International Group for the Study of Lithium Treated Patients (IGSLi), and of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) Bipolar Disorders and Resilience Network. Further, he has received awards from the Italian Society of Neuropsychopharmacology, the Canadian College of Neuropsychopharmacology (CCNP), the Collegium Internationale Neuro-Psychopharmacologicum (CINP), the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry (WFSBP), the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP), the Italian Society of Psychiatry and the prestigious Travel Award of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. He has authored more than 200 papers on bipolar disorder and related phenotypes in international peer-reviewed journals.
Co-chair: Eva Reininghaus, Austria
Prof. Eva Reininghaus is head of department of psychiatry and psychotherapeutic medicine at the Medical University of Graz in Austria. After her medical degree, she did her clinical residency in psychiatry as well as her doctorate in Medical Sciences in Graz. Further, she completed her master of business administration (MBA) in hospital management at the Danube University in Krems, Austria. Research fellowships were at the University of Toronto in 2011 as well as at the LMU Munich in 2013/2014. Prof. Reininghaus has developed her research interest on the study of clinical and neurobiological aspects of bipolar disorder, with a specific focus on somatic comorbidities and neuroinflammation. At the Medical University of Graz, she built up a clinical special outpatient center for bipolar disorder as well as the research unit "Neurobiology and anthropometrics of bipolar disorder". Since 2019 she is vice-dean of study affairs and is known for her outstanding efforts to involve young people in clinical psychiatry and research in the context of mood disorders. She is member of the Consortium on Lithium Genetics (ConLiGen), the psychiatric genetics consortium (PGC), of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) Bipolar Disorders and guest member of the International Group for the Study of Lithium Treated Patients (IGSLi). She has authored more than 80 papers on mood disorders and related phenotypes in international peer-reviewed journals.
Child and Adolescent Neuropsychopharmacology
Chair: Carmen Moreno, Spain
Dr. Carmen Moreno (MD, PhD) is a Child and Adult Psychiatrist at the Hospital Gregorio Marañón in Madrid and Associate Professor of the Gregorio Marañón Psychiatry Department and Complutense University School of Medicine, Madrid, Spain. Dr. Moreno completed her MD and PhD degrees at Autónoma University and Complutense University in Madrid, followed by a Research Fellowship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Columbia University/New York Psychiatric Institute, New York, USA. Dr. Moreno has been focusing her career on severe early-onset psychiatric disorders, mainly psychotic and affective disorders, and autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. She is actively involved on multinational research projects exploring key biological aspects of first-episode psychotic disorders, including multimodal neuroimaging, intermediate mechanisms such as inflammation and oxidative stress, and metabolomics. Her efforts are also focused on exploring secondary effects of psychopharmacological interventions and towards development of new treatment interventions in young patients. Dr. Moreno is actively involved on the development of clinical psychopharmacology in children and adolescents. She has served as consultant for the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and is currently serving as Co-chair of the ECNP Adolescent Child and Adolescent Neuropsychopharmacology Network, and the ECAPN, integrated in the EmprEMA. She has previously served in the ECNP Membership Committee. Dr. Moreno has published several peer-reviewed original publications and book chapters and she has presented numerous scientific communications. She has participated in more than 25 research projects, including 7 with European Union funds. She has been awarded the ECNP Research Fellowship Award, and the Awards for Young Scientists and Senior Scientists of the Spanish Association of Biological Psychiatry.
Co-chair: Diane Ouakil-Purper, France
Diane Purper-Ouakil is full professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the university hospital of Montpellier. She has studied medicine at the University Paris-V, specialized in psychiatry and obtained a PhD in psychopathology. Since 2011, she is head of the child and adolescent unit of the Saint Eloi Hospital and is medical director of a pool of psychiatric units with both CAMHS and AMHS services. The team of Saint Eloi has facilities for both inpatient and outpatient care and has specialized teams for ADHD, eating disorders and high-risk conditions (e.g. children from parents with mental disorders, adolescents with complex disorders requiring multidisciplinary coordination). Diane Purper-Ouakil aims to develop the evidence-base of psychological, neurophysiological and pharmacological treatments, especially for children and adolescents with challenging and enduring behavioral and emotional symptoms. She is involved in collaborative treatment studies, some involving parent programs, an important feature of comprehensive treatment plans for young people with complex needs.
Clinical Outcomes in Early-Phase Clinical Trials
Chair: Silvia Zaragoza Domingo, Spain
Founder and CEO of Neuropsychological Research Organization, S.L. (Neuropsynchro), Barcelona, Spain, a research consulting company focused on CNS clinical trials that is sponsored by the industry and academia, Silvia Zaragoza Domingo is also an independent researcher. Since 2017, she has served as a Clinical Outcomes Assessment (COA) senior scientist in an R&D department in the pharmaceutical industry with a focus on drug development on neuroscience indications.
This Thematic Working Group (TWG) initiative is the result of her nearly 25 years of experience in international clinical trials, specifically with respect to the attempt to increase the efficiency of clinical research by focusing on translational outcomes. She has proposed a path for mitigating the existing gaps in drug discovery with the aim of improving the accuracy of the selection of clinical outcomes and measurement methods in early trials. Her area of interest is the application of the latest methodological innovations to the measurement of health and the detection of changes produced by therapeutic interventions. She is an active member of the ECNP and the International Society for CNS Clinical Trials and Methodology (ISCTM).
Depression
Chair: Brenda Penninx, The Netherlands
Brenda Penninx, PhD, is professor of psychiatric epidemiology at the department of Psychiatry of Amsterdam UMC (location VUmc) in Amsterdam (https://psychiatryamsterdam.nl). Since 2004 she leads the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (NESDA: www.nesda.nl), a longitudinal study of the course and consequences of depressive and anxiety disorders. Prof. Penninx is currently also involved in several other (national and EU-funded) mental health cohort and intervention studies and leads the national Stress in Action consortium (www.stress-in-action.nl). Central themes in her research are understanding psychosocial, somatic and neurobiological risk factors and consequences of depression and anxiety disorders and how to impact on these to improve mental health. Penninx has successfully supervised over 60 students in obtaining their PhD-degree. Her current research group involves over 30 junior and senior researchers and has widely published (>900 papers, >70,000 citations). Since 2016, she is elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, of which she currently serves as Vice-President.
Chair: Andreas Reif, Germany
Andreas Reif studied Medicine from 1993 to 2000 at the University of Würzburg. Having decided that he wanted to work in the field of clinical neuroscience, he obtained his doctorate at the Department of Pharmacology (Supervisor: Prof. Dr. H.H.H.W. Schmidt), working on the catalytic mechanism of nitric oxide synthase type I (NOS-I). He subsequently specialized in psychiatry, where - from early on - he complemented clinical work with research projects. During his clinical education at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Würzburg, he joined the research group of Prof. Klaus-Peter Lesch, where he initially focused on the genetic underpinnings of emotions and studied those in animal models. From 2003 onwards, he shifted his focus to adult ADHD, which is still one of his major areas of interest and expertise. In the last 15 years, he has intensively studied the neurobiological basis of this disorder. In doing so, he became a member of a tight network of researchers from many parts of the world, collaborating in the IMpACT consortium and the ECNP Network ADHD across the Lifespan, both of which he co-founded and co-leads. His second phenotype of interest are mood and anxiety disorders - especially bipolar disorder, therapy-resistant depression, suicide prevention and panic disorder. During his work at the University of Würzburg, he got promoted several times up to the level of Vice Chair. In 2014, he moved to Frankfurt am Main, where he took over the Chair position of the Department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy and established sections on Translational, Experimental and Predicitve Psychiatry. He serves in important positions on the boards of several societies, the most important ones being the DGPPN and ENCP. He currently coordinates the EU-funded DynAMoND consortium and is a work package leader in several additional EU-funded consortia, as well as co-coordinator of the DYNAMIC research center. Andreas Reif has published more than 600 papers with a cumulative impact factor > 3.000 and amounting to an h factor of 89.
Digital Health Applied to the Clinical Research of Brain Disorders
Chair: Maria Faurholt-Jepsen, Denmark
Maria Faurholt-Jepsen, MD, Dr. Med. Sc. and senior researcher has been associated with the Copenhagen Affective Disorder Research Center (CADIC), Psychiatric Center Copenhagen, Rigshospitalet, Denmark since 2006. Her scientific focus has during the entire research career been on measures of illness activity in mental illness. Since 2008 with a main scientific focus on objective measures of illness activity in patients with Bipolar Disorder and since 2009 with the use of smartphones as an electronic biomarker of illness activity and treatment intervention in these patients.
Maria Faurholt-Jepsen is internationally one of the few researchers in front within the area of electronic monitoring in mental illness and was the first, in several randomized controlled trials and observational studies, to investigate smartphone-based monitoring as a marker of illness activity and diagnosis and as a treatment intervention in patients with Bipolar Disorder (the MONARCA I trial, the MONARCA II trial, the RADMIS trial, the BIO study, the NYMPHA-MD study and the Smart Bipolar trial). Maria Faurholt-Jepsen received the Samuel Gershon Investigator Award, ISBD in 2020 for her original research publication. She has published several peer-reviewed original publications and has presented numerous scientific communications.
Co-chair: Ulrich Ebner-Priemer, Germany
Professor Dr Ulrich Ebner-Priemer is full professor and the head of the mental mHealth Lab at KIT, a leading institution on mHealth approaches for mental disorders. His work is characterized by a methodological focus on Ambulatory Assessment (also called mHealth, Ecological Momentary Assessment, or Experience Sampling Method). Phenomena of mental health are studied in everyday life (real-life) in real-time using psychophysiological methods (objective) and time-sensitive analysis (dynamics). He focuses on a) a multimodal operationalization of phenomena of mental health in everyday life using subjective self-reports (e-diaries), peripheral physiological signals (e.g. ECG, EDA), and behavioural (accelerometry, GPS) signals and mobile sensing; b) real-time analysis of psychophysiological parameters to trigger electronic diary assessments (e.g., activity triggered diaries; GPStriggered diaries) or feedback; c) analysis of dynamical processes (affective instability); and d) real-time interventions in daily life. Our unique expertise is on energy-efficient real-time interfaces to enable automated real-time data analysis and feedback. Currently, Prof. Ulrich Ebner-Priemer’s lab provides the mobile technological framework for several multicenter trials: H2020 CoCA and H2020 Eat2beNICE (ADHD), TRR 256 (alcoholism), BipoLife (Bipolar disorder), Release (PTSD), etc. Prof. Ulrich Ebner-Priemer published more than 80 papers on mHealth, including outlets like Nature Neuroscience, Lancet Psychiatry, or Annual Review of Clinical Psychology. He was president of the Society for Ambulatory Assessment (2012-2017) and is currently the chair of the ECNP network “Digital Health applied to the clinical research of brain disorders”.
Down Syndrome and Other Genetic Development Disorders (DSG2D)
Chair: Andre Strydom, United Kingdom
Dr Andre Strydom (MRCPsych, MSc, PhD) is a Professor in intellectual disabilities at the Institute of psychiatry, psychology and neuroscience at King’s College London, where his research is focused on mental disorders in adults with neurodevelopmental conditions, including Down syndrome and other genetic disorders.
Professor Strydom is particularly interested in ageing-related conditions such as dementia in adults with Intellectual disability and Down syndrome. He was the chief investigator of the LonDownS consortium, a collaboration on various aspects of Alzheimer’s disease in Down syndrome. One of the important aims of ongoing work is to deliver the knowledge, tools and expertise that is necessary to enable clinical trials of treatment to prevent or delay the onset of dementia in individuals with Down syndrome.
He leads a partnership funded by NHSE’s National Learning disability and autism programme to analyse data from LeDeR reviews of hospital deaths, and to identify quality improvements and better treatments to reduce health inequalities and premature mortality. He also directs KCL’s neurodevelopmental disorders clinical trials centre which hosts RCTs of medication treatments to reduce morbidity associated with intellectual disabilities and autism.
Professor Strydom works as a Consultant Psychiatrist in Intellectual Disabilities at the South London and the Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.
Follow him on Twitter: @drandrestrydom
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To the article 'King's to lead new collaboration to reduce health inequalities for people with learning disabilities and autistic people'
Co-chair: Yann Herault, France
Yann Hérault (Ph.D.) is a Research Director at the CNRS, the French National Centre for Scientific Research. Biologist and mouse geneticist by training, he is leading the Mouse Clinical Institute, ("Institute Clinique de la Souris", MCI/ICS), and the leader of a research group at the IGBMC. He worked on mouse development using genetics approach for more than 20 years. He developed a series of techniques for chromosomal engineering with the aims to study gene regulation at the genomic level in vivo. Now he have focused on evaluating the consequences of gene dosage effect and copy number variation in pathological situation inducing intellectual disabilities, such as in Down Syndrome (or Trisomy 21), to further propose new therapeutic approaches. He has gained interest in other diseases due to copy number variation such as the 16p11.2 deletion and duplication syndrome, or the 17q21.31/Kansl1 Koolen-de-Vries syndrome, or other genes, like Dyrk1a and Ptchd1, causing ID with or without autism spectrum disorders (ASD). He has developed a resource of models for these diseases to find common mechanisms and specific pathways to improve cognition and behaviour for the benefit of patients. Y. Herault did his PhD. at the University of Lyon in 1993, and got a post-doctoral training at the University of Geneva from 1993 to 1999. He became a PI in 2000 joining the research unit at the Institute de Transgenose in Orleans. Then he was nominated Director of the infrastructure for Transgenesis and Archiving of Animal Models (TAAM) used by a large number of research groups from various locations from late 2007 to early 2014. He has been appointed as the Deputy Director of IGBMC with Bertrand Seraphin as the Director of the Institute from 2014 to 2019. He has developed CELPHEDIA the National Infrastructure for model animal in the French roadmap for Infrastructure and he is coordinating the PHENOMIN national infrastructure for Biology and Health, laureate of the Investment for the Future in 2011 and in 2019 which is built around the ICS, with two other centres the TAAM (head C. Fremond) in Orleans and the Centre for ImmunoPhenomique (CIPHE, head B. Malissen) in Marseille. He was laureate of the Price from the Foundation for Medical Research (FRM) Alsace in 2010 and of the 4th Price from the Foundation Sisley Jérôme Lejeune in 2013.
Experimental Medicines
Chair: Dennis Hernaus, The Netherlands
Dennis Hernaus is an assistant professor at the Maastricht University School for Mental Health and Neuroscience. As a principal investigator, he leads a line of work into the cognitive, neural, and neuropharmacological underpinnings of goal-directed behaviour (e.g., motivation, reinforcement learning, value-based decision-making), and how alterations in these mechanisms are associated with the development of stress-related psychopathology such as depression, psychosis, and anxiety disorders. Dennis has been co-leader of the ENIGMA Clinical High Risk for Psychosis Working Group since 2018 (co-lead: dr. Maria Jalbrzikowski).
Dennis has co-chaired the Experimental Medicine with Gerry Dawson since 2021. Prior to his appointment as co-chair, Dennis participated as academic lead in the Experimental Medicine-initiated “Reward Task Optimisation Consortium”, a combined industry-academic collaboration aimed at developing robust endpoints for the detection of negative symptoms. Dennis now acts as chair as of 2023 ands is committed to bringing together the necessary expertise to advance the understanding, detection, and treatment of mental illness, anhedonia and avolition in particular.
Co-chair: Gerry Dawson, United Kingdom
Gerry Dawson has co-chaired the Network since 2013 with the aim of establishing a European wide consortium of academic centres to develop, validate and maintain state of the art human experimental medicine models to support the discovery and development of new drug treatments in psychiatry. The Network is now firmly established and in 2016 was instrumental in bringing together the successful application to the IMI that resulted in the Psychiatric Ratings using Intermediate Stratified Markers (PRISM) consortium. With Anke Post (Roche), he leads the work package of the project that is responsible for the conduct of the clinical trial that is at the heart of the consortium to study the biological underpinnings of social withdrawal in Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia. More recently, he worked closely with Stephane Pollentier to form the Reward Task Optimisation Consortium (RTOC). RTOC is collectively funded by five pharma companies and brings together two SMEs with four academic members of the Network to optimise a range of tasks that provide objective, quantifiable assessments of anhedonia.
Immuno-NeuroPsychiatry
Chair: Marion Leboyer, France
Marion Leboyer M.D., Ph.D. is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Paris Est (UPEC) in Créteil, France. She is head of the University-affiliated department of Psychiatry (Hôpitaux Universitaires Mondor, Assistance-Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris). She also runs the laboratory “Translational Psychiatry”, which is part of Mondor Institute (Inserm U955). Since 2007, she is the executive director of a non profit foundation, “Fondation FondaMental” created by the French Ministry of Research. Dr. Leboyer has authored or co-authored 480 peer-reviewed international publications on autism spectrum disorder and major affective and psychotic disorder. Her research efforts contributed to a better identification of genetic and environmental risk factors associated with major psychiatric disorders towards better understanding of causal mechanisms. In particular, she has contributed to the identification of mutations of genes implicated in synaptogenesis in autism, associations of genetic vulnerability factors in bipolar disorders, discovery of immune dysfunctions, environmental risk factors as well as brain imaging abnormalities. Her goal is to develop diagnostic tools to better identify homogenous subgroups of psychiatric disorders paving the way to mechanisms-based treatments. Within the expert center networks centers created and coordinated by Fondation FondaMental, several cohorts of patients have been followed allowing for the construction of shared observational databases and biobanks. These networks have enabled multiple collaborations within different national and international research programs. Dr Leboyer is the principal investigator of several international and national research projects funded by the National Research Agency and by the French Ministry of Health including immune signatures (using biomarkers, immune-genetic, brain imaging data), and clinical trials of immune-modulatory treatment. She has authored or co-authored more than 470 original and international papers and review articles since 1984 (H Factor: 73, Nb of citations: 21718), she is editor of 8 books and partner of 2 patents.
Co-chair: Michael E. Benros, Denmark
Michael E. Benros, MD, PhD is a clinician and head of research on Biological and Precision Psychiatry at the Mental Health Centre Copenhagen, Copenhagen University Hospital. He got his medical degree and PhD at Aarhus University and conducted his psychiatric and neurological residencies at the Copenhagen University Hospitals. He is recognized internationally for his ongoing involvement in clinical and epidemiological research into mental health, being at the forefront of the emerging field of ImmunoPsychiatry and has helped advancing the field through several landmark papers highlighting the association between immune-related factors and mental illness utilizing Danish nationwide registers and biobanks. His group’s meta-analysis has amongst other highlighted the potential treatment effects of immune modulating drugs for depression and psychotic disorders. He now leads a sizable effort to disentangle the role of the immune system in the development of severe mental disorders, combining immune exposures from the nationwide Danish registers, with immunogenetic investigations, and novel research on cerebrospinal fluid and blood obtained from biobank and clinical studies of patients with psychotic and affective disorders also utilizing omics and systems biology approaches. Furthermore, he is heading the Precision Psychiatry Initiative aiming at paving the way for more precise diagnostics and new treatment targets. He is a board member of the Psychiatric Immunology Section of the World Psychiatric Association and of the ECNP. He has received a number of awards, including the prestigious Sapere Aude Research Leader award from the Independent Research Fond Denmark.
iPSCs Platform for Neuropsychiatry
Chair: Edna Grünblatt, Switzerland
Prof. Dr. Edna Grünblatt is the head of the Translational Molecular Psychiatry research of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Her main research focus on neurodevelopmental disorders, including ADHD, ASD, psychosis and early onset OCD. She has established research both at the preclinical as well as at the basic molecular neuroscience, integrating both fields in a translational manner. The techniques used include molecular genetics, epigenetic, psychopharmacology, neuronal cellular models and biochemical measures. The goal of her research is to elucidate the etiopathology of neurodevelopmental disorders discovering biomarkers for early diagnosis and precision personalised medicine, predicting treatment response and outcomes. Currently, her research group has established patient specific iPSC (induced pluripotent stem cell) neuronal modelling to enable personalized medicine, via studies of the neuronal/molecular alterations in a dish of the disorders. This will provide a non-invasive approach to investigate etiopathology of neurodevelopmental disorders as well as test drug therapy effects.
Co-chair: Sarah Kittel-Schneider, Germany
Sarah Kittel-Schneider is vice director at the Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatic Medicine of the University Hospital of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany. She is also the section head of the Developmental Psychiatry Unit. Her clinical aim is to improve the transition of patients from child and adolescent psychiatry to adult psychiatry as well as to improve the treatment of mothers and fathers with mental disorders. Her research focus is the neurobiological and genetic basis of affective disorders and ADHD. In her lab, molecular biology methods are used to investigate fluid biomarkers for differential diagnosis and prediction. Moreover, patient-derived neuronal cell models via human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC) are utilised in her cell culture lab group to explore disease pathomechanisms and mode of action of medication as well as aetiological factors for response and non-response to medication.
Neuroimaging
Chair: Nikolaos Koutsouleris, Germany
Prof. Nikolaos Koutsouleris is co-chairing the ECNP Neuroimaging Network since 2017 with the aim to establish a multi-modal transdiagnostic MRI database across the members of the Network. For over 10 years, Nikolaos has developed computational tools to mine MRI, clinical and neuropsychological data to establish a quantitative individualized ascertainment of risk for poor psychiatric outcomes in vulnerable patient populations. Combining these tools with the ECNP Neuroimaging database and making both available to the European psychiatric research offer the potential to collaboratively develop and validate tools for better prognostic, diagnostic, and theranostic applications, allowing for normative modelling and subtyping approaches to resolve the heterogeneity and foster the personalized management of psychiatric disorders.
Co-chair: Paolo Brambilla, Italy
Paolo Brambilla is Medical Doctor, Specialist in Psychiatry, Ph.D. in Neuropharmacology and Neurophysiology, Associate Professor of Psychiatry (Tenured position) at the University of Milan, Milan, Italy, Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry at UTHouston, USA, Director of the Psychiatric Clinic at Fondazione IRCCS Ca' Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico in Milan, Italy, Chair of the EPA Neuroimaging Section, Co-Chair of the ECNP Neuroimaging Network, Associate Editor of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, and CoEditor in Chief of Journal of Affective Disorders. He is the recipient of several international scientific honors, of national and international grants, and is author or co-author of more than 250 original papers published in International peer-reviewed Journals, being first or senior author in more than half of these papers. According to Web of Science, he is amongst the top 100 most cited researchers in the field of bipolar disorder and is the 35th most cited researcher in the field of ‘Neurosciences & Psychology’ of the ‘Top Italian scientists”, based on via-academy. His current lifetime h-index is 51 as calculated by Scopus, 60 by Google Scholar, 54 by ResearchGate. He also bears the Italian National habilitations for Full Professor of Psychiatry and for Full Professor in Child and Adolescent NeuroPsychiatry. Currently, Dr. Brambilla is leading longitudinal imaging studies coupled with neurocognitive, genetic and immunological investigations in major psychoses, mood disorders and developmental psychopathology.
Nutrition
Chair: Francesca Cirulli, Italy
Francesca Cirulli is research director at the Center for behavioural sciences and mental health at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità in Rome, Italy. Her research investigates the role of lifestyle, dietary and social factors in determining stress vulnerability and resilience and the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying it. She is currently investigating how developmental stressors, such as high-fat diet or psychosocial stress, can negatively affect brain development and behaviour. Epigenetic markers, neuroimmune regulations, and microbiota signatures in preclinical studies and clinical cohorts are assessed to derive mechanisms and novel targets for the prevention and treatment of mental disorders. She is the recipient of numerous grants from major international and national funding agencies (FP6, FP7, H2020, ERANET-Neuron, JPI HDHL, Italian Ministry of Health) and participates in review panels for major international funding agencies. She is the past-president of the European Brain and Behaviour Society (EBBS). She is currently treasurer of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) and is chair-elect of ALBA network, a network of leading scientists aiming to promote equality and diversity in brain sciences. She is a member of the Nomination Committee of ECNP. She is the associate editor of Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience and Neuroscience and Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews and is on the editorial board of Neuroscience Applied.
Co-chair: Suzanne Dickson, Sweden
Suzanne L. Dickson is Professor of Neuroendocrinology at the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Within the Nutrition Network, she is promoting activities that foster new collaborations across disciplines with a view to establishing new European-wide activities related to nutrition and brain health. Her research concerns the neurobiology of food intake, with much emphasis on the role of circulating hormones in steering relevant behaviours.
Obsessive Compulsive and Related Disorders (OCRN)
Chair: Bernardo Dell'Osso, Italy
Bernardo Dell’Osso is currently Director of the Psychiatric Clinic of the Ospedale Sacco-Polo Universitario in Milan and Full Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Milan. Graduated in Medicine at the Università degli Studi di Milano, he obtained his residency in Psichiatry in 2006 at the same institution. In 2004/05, he completed a post-doc fellowship at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine of New York and in 2005, he completed a clinical fellowship in Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation at the Department of Biological Psychiatry of the Columbia University. In 2009, he received the Fellowship Award from the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) and in 2013 he received a young investigator Fellowship Award from the International Society of Bipolar Disorders (ISBD). In 2011, he began an annual collaboration with the Stanford University in 2011 at the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences in the Bipolar Disorders Clinic (since 2014 with the affiliation of Scientific Advisor). He currently serves as co-chair for the International College of Obsessive Compulsive Spectrum Disorders. He has authored more than 300 publications on national and international journals and various books. Within an international research team, he participated for the University of Milan from 2011 to 2016 in the European Commission financed project Program FP7 Marie Curie, “EUSARNAD” (European and South African Research Network in Anxiety Disorders). Since 2017, he participates to the international research project COST (Horizon 2020) “EU-PUI” (European Network for Problematic Usage of the Internet).
Co-chair: Michael van Ameringen, Canada
Michael Van Ameringen, MD, FRCPC, is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences at McMaster University and is an active clinician. His current research is focused on the psychopharmacology of Anxiety Disorders, Obsessive Compulsive and Related Disorders, ADHD and treatment resistance. Other research interests include medical cannabis for anxiety and related disorders, the use of Psychedelics in mental health disorders, problematic internet use and the use of mobile mental health apps and technology-based treatments. He has co-authored several national and international treatment guidelines for anxiety disorders and OCD. He is a Board Member of the International College of Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum Disorders (ICOCS) and is also a member of the Scientific Council of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America and of Anxiety Canada. He is Associate Editor for the International Journal of Psychiatry in Clinical Practice and is on the editorial boards for several other journals in the field. He is actively involved in the medical education of medical students and clinical fellows. Dr. Van Ameringen has published widely in the area of OCD, ADHD and Anxiety Disorders.
Physical And meNtal Health – PAN-Health (TWG)
Chair: Marco Solmi, Canada
Marco Solmi is Associate Professor of Psychiatry at University of Ottawa, Canada, Psychiatrist working at The Ottawa Hospital, Investigator at Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, Scientist at the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Charité Universitätsmedizin, Berlin and visiting academic at University of Southampton, and King's College, IoPPN, Psychosis Department, London, UK. His main area of interest is evidence-based psychiatry, leveraging both meta-research techniques and national databases to answer clinically relevant questions. Clinically, he is most interested in prevention/early interventions for mental disorders, psychopharmacology, and physical health in those with mental disorders. He has experience in coordinating large international project, as co-PI of the Collaborative Outcomes study on Health and Functioning during Infection Times (COH-FIT), an online survey translated in 30 languages involving over 230 researchers from over 130 countries measuring functioning and physical and mental health in the general population during Covid-19 pandemic. Starting his academic activity in 2014, by July 2022 he has (co-) authored over 319 research publications. He is among Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers in Psychiatry and Psychology, 2021.
Preclinical Data Forum
Chair: Sabine Hölter, Germany
Sabine Hölter-Koch is a behavioural neuroscientist heading the Behavioural Unit at the German Mouse Clinic at Helmholtz Munich, Germany and lecturer at Technical University Munich. Her research focuses on the translational relevance of behavioural and brain phenotypes of genetic mouse models for neurodevelopmental, neurodegenerative and rare diseases. Her group has worked on phenotypes that are relevant across disorders, phenotype progression over the life time including influences of environmental factors, and on somatic comorbidities of brain disorders. She has worked as workpackage leader and member in several EU-funded projects since 2003 (EUMORPHIA, EUMODIC, INFRAFRONTIER2020, LDLensRad, CAQIII) and currently serves as coordinator of the EBRA cluster PREMOS, co-lead of the Behaviour & Sensory Workgroup of the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium, and as Science Communication Coordinator of COST Action CA20135 “Improving biomedical research by automated behaviour monitoring in the animal home-cage”.
Co-chair: Chantelle Ferland-Beckham, USA
Chantelle Ferland-Beckham, PhD, is a translational neuroscientist by training, with over 20 years of experience developing and validating preclinical models of neuropsychiatric disorders and brain injury. She is also an experienced public policy and advocacy professional, having spent nearly 10 years working on advocacy and public policy issues at the local, state and federal levels. After earning her PhD in Neuroscience from Tulane University, she went on to complete postdoctoral fellowships in both traumatic brain injury and clinical and preclinical models of co-morbid addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder. She was later selected to be an AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In this role as a Health Science Policy Analyst, she worked to promote progress in biomedical research and strengthen the relationship between the NIH and Congress. Additionally, she was part of the Fellows in Innovation initiative, spearheaded by the Office of Science and Technology Policy, analyzing current strategies and providing policy recommendations for suicide prevention in current and former members of the US military. In 2017, she joined Cohen Veterans Bioscience (CVB), a non-profit biomedical research and technology organization dedicated to advancing brain health by fast-tracking precision diagnostics and tailored therapeutics. Now as the Senior Director of External Affairs, she oversees the development of CVB’s policy and advocacy agenda, including promoting and expanding CVB’s role as a leader in brain health and leading the Coalition to Heal Invisible Wounds. She also leads CVB's education and outreach activities to promote research integrity and develop and strengthen relationships with patient, Veterans’ service and other stakeholder communities.
Schizophrenia
Chair: Armida Mucci, Italy
Armida Mucci is full professor of psychiatry at the University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Naples, Italy, director of the school of specialisation in psychiatry of the same university and head of the psychotherapy unit of the University Hospital.
She is co-chair of the WPA psychoneurobiology section; past-president of the EEG and clinical neuroscience society and secretary of the EPA Schizophrenia Section.
Her main research interests include the electrophysiological, brain imaging and functional correlates of negative symptoms and cognitive deficits in schizophrenia.
Co-chair: Oliver Howes, UK
Oliver Howes is professor of molecular psychiatry at the institute of psychiatry, psychology and neuroscience, King’s College, London and programme leader at the MRC London Institute of medicine, Imperial College, London. His clinical work is as consultant psychiatrist at The Maudsley Hospital, where he runs a service for people with psychoses.
His research interests centre on the causes and treatment of affective and psychotic disorders. His recent work has focussed on understanding the role of dopamine and neuroinflammation in the development of psychosis, the effects of antipsychotic drugs, & the causes of cognitive impairments. This work has been recognised through a number of awards including the Royal College of Psychiatrists Researcher of the Year Award (2017), Schizophrenia International Research Society Rising Star Award 2013, European Psychiatric Association Biological Psychiatry Prize (2012), the Royal Society of Medicine Psychiatry Prize (2010), and the British Association of Psychopharmacology Clinical Psychopharmacology Prize (2007). In 2019 Web of Science named him as one of the most influential researchers in the world based on high impact papers over the last decade. He was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2020.
During the COVID19 lockdown he was awarded a prize for running downhill the most times in one month. Other career highlights include working as a junior potato scrubber on a farm. He spends his spare time trying to find the world’s best ice-cream.
Suicide
Chair: Giuseppe Fanelli, Italy
Giuseppe Fanelli is a medical doctor and psychiatrist. He graduated from the University of Bari (Bari, Italy), defending a thesis on the impact of pathway-specific Polygenic Risk Scores (PRSs) for schizophrenia on cognition and brain activity in healthy humans. After starting his residency in psychiatry at the University of Bologna (Italy), he worked both in inpatient and outpatient clinical settings, with a particular focus on affective and psychotic disorders. He also continued to work in the field of psychiatric genomics and neuropsychobiology with Prof. Alessandro Serretti and Dr Chiara Fabbri, applying PRS approaches to the study of antidepressant response and suicidal behaviours. Since November 2019, he has joined Prof. Barbara Franke & Dr Janita Bralten's lab at the Radboud University Medical Center (Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour - Nijmegen, The Netherlands) first as a visiting researcher and then as a PhD student. He is currently junior assistant professor at the University of Bologna and is actively involved in the European Horizon 2020 project 'Prevention and Remediation of Insulin Multimorbidity in Europe' (PRIME), investigating the genetic factors underlying the high comorbidity between neuropsychiatric disorders and insulin resistance-related somatic diseases.
Co-chair: Anjali Sankar, Denmark
Senior Researcher at the Neurobiology Research Unit, Copenhagen University and Adjunct Assistant Professor of psychiatry at Yale University Dr. Sankar’s research is dedicated to the study of mood disorders, both major depressive and bipolar disorders. An important focus is on identifying reliable biomarkers to reduce and prevent negative outcomes, especially suicide using multimodal neuroimaging techniques.
Traumatic Stress
Chair: Iryna Frankova, Ukraine
Iryna Frankova, M.D., PhD, is clinical psychologist and Associate Professor at the Department of Medical Psychology, Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy of Bogomolets National Medical University (BNMU), Kyiv, Ukraine. She combines clinical, research and educational activities. Her PhD was focused on the childhood trauma as a predictor of prolonged social withdrawal. Currently, Dr. Frankova’s research focuses mainly on a gender aspect of PTSD prevention and early interventions after exposure to acute stress. The field of her interest includes as well mental health issues of forcibly displaced persons and military personnel. Dr. Frankova is a recipient of EFPT Porto Research Award. She is a co-founder and former Co-Chair of the European Federation of Psychiatric Trainees (EFPT) Psychiatry Across Borders (PAB) Working Group. In 2018 she was a co-director of Advanced Research Workshop "Risk Management of Terrorism Induced Stress - Guidelines for the Golden Hours (Who, What and When)" (Odesa, Ukraine), supported by NATO Science for Peace Programme.
Co-Chair: Lior Carmi, Israel
Lior Carmi is a Neuro-Psychologist, Ph.D., at Tel Aviv University, and an academic lab manager at Sheba hospital, Israel. Dr. Carmi has vast experience in electrophysiological and neurocognitive aspects of PTSD and leads studies of non-invasive neuromodulation in PTSD and early interventions following traumatic events. Dr. Carmi is an academic laboratory manager in Sheba Medical Center and leads worldwide studies in neuromodulation, imaging, and endophenotype of PTSD. Recently, Dr. Carmi leads the field of digital monitoring of psychiatric disorders and lead pioneer studies of digital phenotype in depression, addiction, and PTSD.
Prevention of Mental Disorders and Mental Health Promotion
Chair: Paolo Fusar-Poli, United Kingdom/Italy
Prof. Dr. Paolo Fusar-Poli, MD, PhD, Reader in Psychiatry & Youth Mental Health at Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s college of London (UK) and Associate professor of Psychiatry at the Brain and Behavioral Sciences Department, University of Pavia (Italy), has more than 10 years of experience in the prevention of psychosis, leading one of the oldest and largest clinical services of this type in Europe (OASIS). His lab is currently investigating Precision Medicine and Clinical Prediction strategies that are based on Evidence Based Medicine, in combination with experimental psychopharmacological treatments for the prevention of mental disorders, such as intranasal oxytocin, phosphodiesterase inhibitors and cannabinoids. He has long-standing expertise in managing research networks: he is coordinating the PSYSCAN and HARMONY international research networks for patients at risk of psychosis. Since 2015, he has been listed every year by Thomson Reuters as one of the 100 “most influential scientific minds” and “top 1% highly cited scientists in the area of psychiatry”.
Co-chair: Celso Arango, Spain
Celso Arango, MD, PhD is a psychiatrist and Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, Professor of Psychiatry at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, Full Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and Visiting Professor at King’s College London. He is also Director of the Institute of Psychiatry and Mental Health at Hospital Gregorio Marañon and Chair of the Child and Adolescent Department at the same institution. Dr Arango was the Scientific Director of the Spanish Psychiatric Research Network with 25 centres and more than 400 researchers from 2008 through 2016. He has written more than 400 peer-reviewed articles, 8 books, and more than 44 book chapters. Many of his articles and book chapters have focused on the neurobiology of early-onset and first-episode psychosis as well as the safety of psychiatric medications in paediatric patients. In addition, his group has shown how patients with a first psychotic episode experience greater losses of grey matter than expected and found a correlation of grey matter loss with antioxidant status. He is conducting clinical trials with a focus on primary and secondary prevention (e.g. reducing bullying in schools or use of NAC in first episode early onset psychosis). Dr. Arango has participated in more than 73 competitively funded research projects, as Principal Investigator in 55 of them. His research projects have been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Health, Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, NIMH, NARSAD, Stanley Foundation, Fundación Alicia Koplowitz, Caja Navarra, and Department of Health in the State of Madrid, and he is currently participating in eight EU projects funded by the VII Framework and H2020. Furthermore, in 2008 Dr Arango was awarded the Spanish Ministry of Health Medal of Honour, the “Cruz de la Orden Civil de Sanidad”. He is a member of the European Brain Council Board (the European Commission's advisory council), and has been President of the Ministry of Health, Social Services, and Equality’s National Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Specialty Commission since 2014. In 2016, Dr Arango was designated President Elect of the Spanish Society of Psychiatry (SEP). He was President of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) from 2016 to 2019.
Psychedelic research
Chair: Gitte Moos Knudsen, Denmark
Gitte Moos Knudsen is Past-President of ECNP and professor at Dept. Neurology, Rigshospitalet and University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She is a translational neurobiologist and clinical neurologist with interest in advanced methodological developments that she subsequently applies in her research to address pertinent neurobiological and clinical issues. Her scientific interests include the neurobiology of cerebral neurotransmission and neuropharmacological interventions with particular emphasis on molecular brain imaging. Her lab investigates human brain disease mechanisms and predicts brain responses to categories of neuromodulatory interventions as well as treatment efficacy. For this purpose, they use PET brain scanning to image brain receptors and receptor occupancy, and fMRI to evaluate drug effects on the brain hemodynamic response as well as the brains regional interactions, i.e., functional connectivity.
Co-chair: Johan Lundberg, Sweden
Johan Lundberg is a consultant psychiatrist at Northern Stockholm Psychiatry and an adjunct professor of psychiatry and research group leader at Karolinska Institutet. Johan Lundberg’s research focuses on development and validation of in vivo neuroimaging tools such as Positron Emission Tomography that he applies on clinical research question within the area of mood disorders with the overriding aim on disentangle the mechanism of action of different treatment modalities as well as the pathophysiology of mood disorders. This has lately been done within the framework of randomized controlled trials of ketamine and psilocybin. He is also active in the field of psychiatric pharmacoepidemiology where his work has shed light on both the societal and individual burden of major depression, treatment resistant depression and suicidal behavior in relation to depression.
Resilience
Chair: Christiaan Vinkers, The Netherlands
Christiaan Vinkers is an Associate Professor at the Amsterdam University Medical Center in the Netherlands. As a psychiatrist and a neuroscientist, his overall research objective is to investigate the neurobiological background of stress resilience and vulnerability including (epi)genetic, neuroendocrine, and brain circuitry factors. He has obtained degrees in Pharmacy, Medicine and Law. His preclinical research (PhD training) concerned the genetic and molecular basis of stress reactivity using pharmacological, genetic and molecular techniques. During his Pharmacy study, subsequent PhD training, and Medicine study, he saw a great unmet need for effective treatment in psychiatry, convincing him to become a psychiatrist. In daily practice, he diagnoses and treats patients with psychiatric disorders (depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder) which directly links his fundamental research activities to a clinical setting. He is co-founder of The Young Psychiatrist, the Dutch Stress Consortium STRESS-NL, and initiator of a website with information on antidepressants for the Dutch general public.
Co-chair: Nic van der Wee, The Netherlands
Nic van der Wee is a full professor of Psychiatry, in particular Biological Psychiatry, at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC). He combines clinical, research and educational activities. The research of his group encompasses the neurobiology, phenomenology, and treatment of affective and stress and trauma related disorders across the life-span, with a preference for multidisciplinary and translational approaches and with a special interest in resilience and vulnerability. He is member of the management teams of the LUMC research profile area Translational Neuroscience (LCTN) and the interfaculty Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC). He has authored or co-authored > 200 scientific articles and book chapters and supervised more than 15 PhD projects. He is involved in national and international research networks, including ENIGMA, and several EU projects. He believes that collaborative research is key to foster European psychiatry.
Pharmacogenomics and Transcriptomics
Chair: Bernhard Baune, Germany
Prof. Bernhard Baune (PhD, MD, MPH, FRANZCP) is the Director of the University Hospital Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Münster, Germany. Prof. Baune has been the Cato Chair and Head of Department of Psychiatry at the University of Melbourne, Australia prior to being awarded the Director position at the University of Münster. Prof. Baune is a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrist (FRANZCP), he is a Professorial Fellow of the Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne and also at the Florey Mental Health Theme at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, The University of Melbourne, Australia. Prof. Baune is known for his extensive research program into personalised psychiatry, molecular psychiatry, prediction and biomarker research and treatment response research as well as for key research achievements in the field of immune-neurobiology of psychiatric disorders. Prof. Baune’s translational work at the University of Münster aims to make real-world differences to clinical practice by integrating neurobiological and clinical information, by personalising clinical trials and treatments and by targeting the mechanisms of functional recovery. Other related work includes the leadership of an international consortium on the genomics of severe depression and response to ECT in affective disorders (GenECT-ic) and he leads an international study on the genomics of cognitive function in depression. His research is nationally and internationally funded and he has published more than 480 peer-reviewed articles, reviews and book chapters, and edited several text books in Psychiatry, and most recently the books “Personalised Psychiatry” and “Inflammation and Immunity of Depression” (March 2019).
Co-chair: Alessandra Minelli, Italy
Dr Alessandra Minelli, is assistant professor in psychobiology at the University of Brescia in Italy. The overall goal of Dr. Minelli is the identification of clinical and biological predictors associated with the development of major depressive disorders (MDD) and to the efficacy of relative treatments, both pharmacological and non-pharmacological. Her research has strongly contributed to define clinical outcomes in pharmacogenomics and transcriptomics studies on antidepressant treatment, clinical and genetic markers related to unfavorable treatment outcome focusing on treatment resistant depression (TRD), biological dysregulation associated to childhood trauma as well as clinical and biological markers associated to electroconvulsive therapy in TRD patients.
Neuromodulation (TWG)
Chair: Stefano Pallanti, USA
Stefano Pallanti is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Florence, Director of the Institute for Neurosciences in Italy, creating and chairing a TMS Clinical service for "Treatment Resistant" patients, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (General Psychiatry and Psychology (Adult)), at Stanford University Medical Center, CA, USA, where he works as TMS Consultant, Visiting Professor at Imperial College, London, UK, Visiting Professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, NY and Adjunct Associate Professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA, where he served as the Founder and Director of the Strategic Center of Excellence for OCD, Impulsive and Behavioural Addiction. He has been founder, member and board of Director of the Clinical TMS Society (USA); Executive Committee Member of ECNP, Fellow and member of the American Psychiatric Association for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, for its Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) and for the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Spectrum Workgroup for the DSM-5.0; Board of directors of the International College for Obsessive-Compulsive Syndromes (ICOCS) and an Associate Director of the European Certificate, International Master Course in Affective Neuroscience. His current collaborative research projects are treatment-resistant OCD, PANDAS, ADHD – OCD spectrum. He is particularly interested in rTMS and Neuromodulation treatments and research in multi-disciplinary context. He is Editor of Archive of Behavioral Addiction, Deputy Editor of CNS Spectrum. He has published more than 200 peer reviewed papers, 12 books, 4 manuals of Psychiatry and his H index is now 51.
