Keynote Speakers

Christoph Correll
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John Kane
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Nikolaos Koutsouleris
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Petros Levounis
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Patrick McGorry
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Sir Robin Murray
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Swaran Preet Singh
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Jim van Os
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Symposia Speakers

Laura Baker
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Tobias Banaschewski
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Matthew Broome
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Chris Davey
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Jennifer Dwyer
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Marta Di Forti
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Paolo Fusar-Poli
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Silvana Galderisi
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Sinan Gülöksüz
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Dimitrios N. Kiosses
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Miia Kivipelto
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Stefan Leucht
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Luis Augusto Rohde
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Nikolaos Scarmeas
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Ilina Singh
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David Taylor
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Anita Thapar
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Evangelos Vassos
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Allan Young
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Professor, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim, Germany
Tobias Banaschewski, MD, PhD, is Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Medical Faculty Mannheim of the University of Heidelberg and Medical Director of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry as well as Deputy Director of the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany. Dr. Banaschewski studied psychology and medicine at the University of Marburg in Germany. He worked as Clinical Assistant in Adult Psychiatry in Marburg and as Clinical and Research Assistant in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Göttingen, Germany.
Prof. Banaschewski is Chair of the European Network for Hyperkinetic Disorders (EUNETHYDIS), Member of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology, Board committee member of the German ADHD network and a Past-President of the German Society of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy (DGKJP). His main research foci are on the psychopathology, neurobiology, neuropsychology, neurophysiology and psychopharmacology treatment of ADHD, autism and comorbid disorders. He co-authored more than 550 peer-reviewed papers and received the Kramer-Pollnow-Award in 2003, the August-Homburger Award in 2014 and the Saarland ADHD-Research Award in 2016.
MRC Senior Clinical Fellow, BRC Senior Lecturer, King's College London (KCL), United Kingdom
Dr Marta Di Forti is a Senior Lecturer at the Dept of Social, Developmental and Genetic Research, Institute of Psychiatry, and Honorary Consultant Adult Psychiatrist, Lambeth Community team, South London and Maudsley NHS foundation Trust. She leads the first and only Cannabis Clinic for patients with Psychotic disorders in UK. She was recently awarded a MRC Senior Research Fellowship to expand her research in the role of cannabis use in psychosis and its underlying biology. With her team she showed for the first time that use of high potency types of cannabis e.g. "skunk" carries a higher risk of psychosis than use of traditional types and that it affects rates of Psychotic disorders across Europe. Though it still remains unclear who are those cannabis use most at risk. Her future work aims to investigate the interaction between cannabis use and genes predisposing to schizophrenia, and how cannabis changes the epigenome.
Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology, School for Mental Health and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Netherlands and the Department of Psychiatry, Specialized Treatment Early in Psychosis (STEP) Program, Yale University School of Medicine, USA
Sinan Guloksuz, MD, PhD is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology, School for Mental Health and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, and the Department of Psychiatry, Specialized Treatment Early in Psychosis (STEP) Program, Yale University School of Medicine. With a background in clinical psychiatry and epidemiology, Dr. Guloksuz’s main research focus has been on understanding the mechanisms underlying mental health outcomes and investigating the contribution of exposome and genome to multidimensional phenotypes in the general population cohorts (EFPTS, EDSP, TWINSCAN, NEMESIS-I/II, UK Biobank, ABCD) and large case-control samples (GROUP, EUGEI, Athens FEP cohort). His work in the EUGEI using the polygenic risk score for schizophrenia has provided the initial molecular evidence for gene-environment interaction in schizophrenia. His recent series of work adopting the exposome framework in psychiatry for the first time resulted in a cumulative environmental liability score (exposome score for schizophrenia) that has been tested for predictive performance and stratification properties in the general population, as well as clinical utility in first episode psychosis. The second body of his work has been in the areas of clinical trials and service research for psychosis spectrum disorder. His work has resulted in over 140 peer-reviewed publications, 12 book chapters, and awarded with international prizes from WPA, EPA, and APA. He is the WorkPackage Leader (Gene-Environment Interaction) in the recently ZonMw-funded FEP project: OPHELIA, and a consortium member in the EU Horizon 2020 Pharmacogenetics in Psychiatry project. He has ongoing active roles in professional organizations, such as the Schizophrenia International Research Society and currently serves as the Associate Editor of the npj Mental Health Research and the Editorial Board Member of the British Journal of Psychiatry and the PLOS One.
Adjunct Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Chair, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Department of Psychiatry at North Shore University Hospital and Long Island Jewish Medical Center, USA
John M. Kane, MD. is the Senior Vice President for Behavioral Health Services at Northwell Health in New Hyde Park, New York. He is Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at The Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, New York. Additionally, he is Professor and Chairman of Psychiatry at The Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell.
Dr. Kane earned his medical degree from New York University in New York, New York, and completed his internship and residency in Psychiatry at The Zucker Hillside Hospital. He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.
Dr. Kane is the recipient of many awards, including the Lieber Prize, The APA’s Kempf Award and Foundations Prize, the New York State Office of Mental Health Lifetime Achievement Award, The Dean Award from the American College of Psychiatrists. He has served as President of the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology, the Psychiatry Research Society and the Schizophrenia International Research Society.
Dr. Kane has been the principal investigator for research projects focusing on schizophrenia, psychobiology and treatment, recovery, and improving the quality and cost of care. He is the author of over 700 peer-reviewed papers and serves on the editorial boards of numerous journals.
Professor of Psychiatric Research at the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP), King’s College London (KCL), UK
Robin Murray is a Professor at the Institute of Psychiatry, London. He was one of the first to suggest that schizophrenia was in part a neurodevelopmental disorder, and has contributed to the understanding that obstetric events, drug abuse and social adversity dysregulate striatal dopamine and thus increase the risk of psychosis. He has written over 800 articles, not all of them boring! He has supervised 81 PhDs, and 44 of his students have become full professors. He is one of only 5 psychiatrists ever to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and received a knighthood in 2011.
Professor of Preventive Psychiatry, Head, EPIC Lab, King's College London, United Kingdom
Paolo Fusar-Poli is a Professor of Preventive Psychiatry at the Department of Psychosis Studies, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), King's College London (KCL), where he heads the Early Psychosis: Intervention and Clinical-detection Laboratory (EPIC Lab). He is also a consultant psychiatrist in the Outreach And Support In South-London (OASIS) mental health service at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, one of the oldest and largest preventive services worldwide. Much of his research utilises evidence-based medicine, clinical prediction, neuroscience and experimental therapeutics and aims to develop new and effective strategies to improve the prevention of mental disorders.
He completed his medical studies, psychiatric training, PhD and first consultant job at the University of Pavia, Italy, where he is Associate Professor. During his PhD he moved to the IoPPN: this collaborative relationship has continued ever since.
He is author of about 400 publications in PubMed journals, with h-index of 94 (up to 2021), invited speaker and/or chairman in several national and international scientific conferences and principal investigator or co-investigator of national and international grants focused on the prevention of mental disorders. He chairs national and international clinical research networks for the prevention of mental disorders.
• 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 – Highly Cited Researcher (top 1% by citations for field and year in the Web of Science)
• 2019 ranked as the number two expert in psychosis in the world (top 0.004% out of 49,886 ranked scientists up to 2021)
• 2012 and 2019 External Advisory, DSM-5 and DSM-5TR Psychosis Working Group, US.
Associate Professsor of Neurology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Dr Nikos Scarmeas was born and raised in Athens Greece. After obtaining an M.D. degree from the University of Athens he moved to the US and had Neurology residency training and then a 2-year clinical fellowship in Aging and Dementia at Columbia University Medical Center. He also completed a Masters degree in Biostatistics – Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.
Dr Scarmeas joined the faculty of Columbia University in 2002. He currently shares his research time between National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and Columbia University. His educational and clinical work includes seeing elderly patients with dementias and cognitive dysfunction, supervising and teaching of Medical students and Neurology residents at National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
His research interests include cognitive reserve (i.e. how higher IQ, education, more demanding occupational attainments, or more engagement in cognitive-social-physical leisure - lifestyle activities can help elderly cope better with the damage caused to their brains by Alzheimer’s disease and aging and therefore reduce their risk for dementia and slow down their rates of cognitive and functional decline). In addition, he has extensively investigated the contribution of diet (in particular composite dietary patterns such as a Mediterranean-type diet and others) and physical activity in dementias and healthy aging.
Dr Scarmeas has been the Principal Investigator in studies funded by either the Alzheimer's Association (IIRG) or the NIH-NIA and a Co-Investigator in multiple others. His research work has resulted in more than 200 original PubMed publications in highly esteemed journals (>14000 Scopus citations, Scopus h-index = 67) and multiple presentations in internationally acclaimed scientific conferences - meetings. He reviews for more than 200 international scientific journals and international funding agencies including the Alzheimer’s Association, the US National Institute of Health, the European Union programs (i.e. Marie Curie, European Research Council) etc.
For more information regarding Dr Scarmeas’ work see: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?cmd=search&term=Scarmeas+N%5Bau%5D&dispmax=50
Professor and Chairman, Department of Psychiatry and Psychology, Maastricht University Medical Centre, Netherlands
Prof. Dr. Jim van Os is Professor of Psychiatry and Chairman of the Division Neuroscience at Utrecht University Medical Centre. He is also Visiting Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology at the Institute of Psychiatry in London.
He has more than 30 years clinical experience in the treatment of severe mental illness, particularly psychotic disorders and bipolar disorder, working in a position of clinical leadership at Maastricht University Medical Centre and later at Utrecht University Medical Centre in the Netherlands, where he supervised more than 75 PhD theses.
In his area of clinical psychiatric epidemiology and public mental health, he is part of an international movement overseeing extensive pilots of recovery-based and e/mHealth-based disruptive mental health service transformation in the Netherlands and elsewhere in the world.
He works at the interface of 'hard' brain science, health services research, art and subjective experiences of people with 'lived experience' in mental healthcare. In 2014 he published his book 'Beyond DSM-5', and in 2016 the book ‘Good Mental Health Care’.
Van Os was a member of the Psychosis Workgroup of DSM5, and coordinator of the European FP7 EUGEI project, a 12 million euro grant to investigate the impact of the social environment on psychosis.
He has been a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) since 2011 and was appointed Fellow of King's College London in 2016.
Van Os has been appearing on the Thomson-Reuter Web of Science list of 'most influential scientific minds of our time' since 2014.
He is a member of the editorial board of many major European and American scientific journals such as Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, European Psychiatry, Psychological Medicine, Schizophrenia Research, Schizophrenia Bulletin, Early Intervention in Psychiatry, Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, Psychosis Journal, The Journal of Mental Health and the Journal of Psychiatry and Neurological Sciences. He is also an Academic Editor at PLoSONE.
Professor, Department of Psychiatry in Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul and University of São Paulo, Brazil
Luis A Rohde, MD, PhD is Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, Director of the Program for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder at the Hospital de Clinicas de Porto Alegre, and Vice-Coordinator of the National Institute of Developmental Psychiatry for Children and Adolescent, Brazil. He is currently Associate Editor of the Journal of Attention Disorders. He served as International Editor of the J Am Acad Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (2008-2017) and as Co-Editor of the European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (2004-2013).
He is Immediate Past President of the World Federation of ADHD and was former Vice-President of the International Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions. He was also a member of the American Psychiatric Association working group for defining ADHD diagnosis in the DSM-5.
Dr. Rohde’s research interests include ADHD epidemiology, genetics, pharmacogenetics, neuroimaging, and the effects of pharmacological and psychosocial treatments for ADHD. He has published extensively in peer review international and national journals (400 papers) and has been an author or co-author in over 50 book chapters and editorials. He is editor or organizer of 8 books addressing child and adolescent mental health published in Brazil, UK, Germany, and the US. He has 34000 citations per doc and an H index = 78 (google scholar). In 2020, he was included as a “Highly Cited Researcher” in Psychiatry and Psychology for the last decade by Clarivate – Web of Science (top 1%).
Professor, Division of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences, Cardiff University, United Kingdom
Professor Anita Thapar FRCPsych, PhD, CBE, FMedSci, is a clinical academic child and adolescent psychiatrist. She heads the academic Child & Adolescent Psychiatry section at the Division of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences, Cardiff University and also directs the developmental disorders group within the MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics.
Her research focuses on the origins, development and complications of child neurodevelopmental disorders focusing mainly on ADHD but also on adolescent depression. Currently funded research investigations focus on the natural history of ADHD and Autism into adult life, the contribution of genetic and early life exposures to ADHD and ASD trajectories and investigations on youth depression including the recently funded £10million Wolfson Centre for Youth Mental Health in Wales.
Anita trained in Medicine, Psychiatry and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Cardiff and South Wales. She was Senior Lecturer in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Manchester between 1996 and 1999. She then became the first Professor in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Wales in 1999 and developed research, teaching and a specialist clinical service (an NHS tertiary service for child neurodevelopmental disorders and "transition" ADHD clinic for 15 to 25 year olds).
In 2015, she served as lead editor (together with Dr. Daniel S. Pine, NIMH) of the authoritative international textbook Rutter's Textbook of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Anita was awarded a CBE for services to Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in 2017, the President’s Medal from the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 2015 for contributions to policy, public knowledge, education and meeting population and patient care needs and the Ruane Prize 2015 from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, USA for outstanding Child & Adolescent Psychiatric research. She has served on Welsh Government Child and Adolescent Mental Health Policy groups and is also on the board of Trustees for the UK Charity ADHD Foundation.
Anita has no financial disclosures-her salary comes from Cardiff University.
She is married to a GP and has two sons.
https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/people/view/126769-thapar-anita
Professor, Klinik und Poliklinik für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie, Technische Universität München, Germany
Doctor Leucht studied medicine in Munich, Germany, Cape Town, South Africa, Alicante Spain, and Atlanta, USA. He is head of the Section of Evidence-Based Medicine in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the Technical University of Munich, Germany, where he has practiced since 1994 and now runs the “Section Evidence-Based Medicine in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy”. He worked as a research associate at the Zucker Hillside Hospital, in New York in 2002/2003. He spent a year as honorary fellow at the University Department of Psychiatry in Oxford, he held a position of honorary professor of Evidence-based Psychopharmacology at the University of Aarhus, Denmark until 2019 and he is currently visiting professor at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London and at Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China. He is part of the editorial teams of several psychiatric journals, including the Cochrane Schizophrenia Group, Lancet Psychiatry, Schizophrenia Research, Schizophrenia Bulletin, Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, International Clinical Psychopharmacology, European Neuropsychopharmacology and European Psychiatry. Since inception of the ranking in 2014 Thompson Reuters has named Dr. Leucht on their list of the World’s Most Influential Minds, as ranking in the top 1% citations for the field of psychiatry, and as a Highly Cited Researcher. In 2020 Expertscape (http://expertscape.com/ex/schizophrenia) ranked him among the top ten schizophrenia researchers. He led the schizophrenia guideline group of the College of International Neuropsychopharmacology (CINP). He was awarded the David Sackett Award of the German Network of Evidence-Based Medicine in 2010, The American Psychiatric Association Young Minds in Psychiatry Award in 2004, and the Robert Kerwin Award of the Royal College of Psychiatry in 2012. The overarching theme of Dr. Leucht's research is and evidence-based medicine in psychiatry with a focus on meta-analyses, clinical trials and the improvement of methodology of studies in this area. He also has a research interest in pharmacogenetics, compliance enhancement strategies and medical decision making.
Professor of Critical and Social Psychiatry, Division of Psychiatry, Faculty of Brain Sciences, University College London, United Kingdom
Joanna Moncrieff is a Professor of Critical and Social Psychiatry at University College London, and works as a consultant psychiatrist at the North East London Foundation Trust. She has been writing about the over-use and misrepresentation of psychiatric drugs since the 1990s and she has also researched and written about the history, politics and philosophy of psychiatry more generally. She is currently leading UK government-funded research on reducing and discontinuing antipsychotic drug treatment (the RADAR study), and collaborating on a study to support antidepressant discontinuation. In the 1990s she co-founded the Critical Psychiatry Network to link up with other, like-minded psychiatrists. She is author of numerous papers and her books include A Straight Talking Introduction to Psychiatric Drugs Second edition (PCCS Books), published in September 2020, as well as The Bitterest Pills: The Troubling Story of Antipsychotic Drugs (2013) and The Myth of the Chemical Cure (2009) (Palgrave Macmillan).
Professor of Psychopharmacology, King’s College London (KCL), United Kindom
David Taylor is Director of Pharmacy and Pathology at the Maudsley Hospital and Professor of Psychopharmacology at King’s College, London, UK.
In 2014, David was ranked in the top 100 clinical leaders in the NHS by the Health Service Journal.
Professor Taylor is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology.
David was a member of the UK Department of Transport expert panel that introduced drug-driving regulation. He is currently a member of the UK government’s Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs.
Professor Taylor has been the lead author of the Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines since their inception in 1993. The Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines have sold over 300,000 copies in fourteen editions and twelve languages.
David has also authored over 350 clinical papers in journals such as the Lancet, BMJ, British Journal of Psychiatry and Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. These papers have been cited over 15,000 times.
Professor Taylor has written or edited seven other books and written over twenty book chapters.
Professor of Psychiatry and Molecular Medicine, The Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, Hempstead NY, USA, and Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Charité University Medicine, Berlin, Germany.
Christoph U. Correll is Professor of Psychiatry at The Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, New York, USA, and also Professor and Chair of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Charité University Medicine, Berlin, Germany. He completed his medical studies at the Free University of Berlin in Germany, and Dundee University Medical School in Scotland. He is board certified in general psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry, having completed both residencies at The Zucker Hillside Hospital in New York City. Since 1997, he has been working and conducting research in New York, USA, and since 2017 he is also working in Germany again.
Professor Correll focuses on the identification and treatment of youth and adults with severe mental illness, clinical trials, epidemiology, psychopharmacology, meta-analyses, and the interface between physical health and mental health.
He has authored or co-authored over 750 journal articles that have been cited more than 54.000 times and received over 40 research awards for his work.
Since 2014, the beginning of this metric, he has been listed every year by Clarivate/Web of Science as one of the "most influential scientific minds" and "top 1% cited scientists in the area of psychiatry" (https://hcr.clarivate.com).
Additionally, he has been holding numerous Expertscape rankings, such as 15 topics ranked as "Expert" (among the top 1% cited scientists), and 24 topics ranked as "World Expert" (among the top 0.1% cited scientists), including in November 2021 for example ranked as number one among world experts for the following areas:
- Central Nervous Agents, out of 315,372 scientists (http://expertscape.com/ex/central+nervous+system+agents)
- Psychotropic drugs, out of 133,209 scientists (http://expertscape.com/ex/psychotropic+drugs)
- Schizophrenia, out of 93,742 scientists(http://expertscape.com/ex/schizophrenia)
- Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders, out of 97,960 scientists (http://expertscape.com/ex/schizophrenia+spectrum+and+other+psychotic+disorders)
- Antipsychotics, out of 60,512 scientists (http://expertscape.com/ex/antipsychotics)
- Central nervous system depressants, out of 240,575 ranked scientists (http://expertscape.com/ex/central+nervous+system+depressants)
- Tranquilizing agents, out of 71,099 scientists (http://expertscape.com/ex/tranquilizing agents)
- Weight gain, out of 70,866 scientists (http://expertscape.com/ex/weight+gain)
Professor of Psychiatry, University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli", Naples, Italy
Silvana Galderisi, MD, PhD, is full professor of Psychiatry, Director of the Emergency Unit of the Department of Mental Health of the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli; Coordinator of the Outpatient Unit for Anxiety and Psychotic Disorders and of the Rehabilitation Program for severe mental disorders of the same Department.
She is President Elect of the Italian Society for Psychopathology (SOPSI), Past President of the European Psychiatric Association (EPA), Chairperson of the Standing Committee on Ethics of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), and Co-chair of the WPA Working Group “Implementing alternatives to coercion in Mental Health Care”. She is founding member and member of the Board of Directors of the European Group for Research in Schizophrenia (EGRIS), board member of the European Scientific Association on Schizophrenia and other Psychoses (ESAS), member of the Strategic Plan Task Force of the Schizophrenia International Society (SIRS), board member of the Italian Society of Biological Psychiatry. She is Honorary Fellow of the World Psychiatric Association-WPA, Honorary Member of the Polish Psychiatric Association and of the Hungarian Psychiatric Association (HPA), International Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association-APA, International Advisor of the Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology (JSPN), and Honorary Fellow of the European Society of Social Psychiatry (ESSP).
Her research activity focuses on Schizophrenia pathophysiology, treatment and outcome, with particular reference to the domains of negative symptoms and cognition and their impact on psychosocial outcome. She is author/coauthor of more than 250 publications, in national and international journals and books, member of the Editorial Boards of several international psychiatric journals, Editor in Chief of Schizophrenia Bulletin Open.
Professor of Psychiatry , Melbourne Medical School, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry & Health Sciences, Editor, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Chair, Australasian Society of Bipolar and Depressive Disorders
Chris Davey is the Head of Department of Psychiatry at the University of Melbourne and a psychiatrist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. He is the current Editor of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry. Chris’s main clinical and research interest is in the management of severe mood disorders, especially in young people. He has led, or is leading, large multicentre clinical trials of treatments for depression examining psychotherapy, antidepressant medications, anti-inflammatory agents, and ketamine. He is also interested in using brain imaging to better understand depression and social-affective processes.
Chris completed his medical degree at the University of Western Australia. He trained in psychiatry in Sydney and Melbourne, and completed his PhD at the University of Melbourne. Before he commenced his current role, Chris worked for many years at Orygen, a youth mental health clinical and research program in Melbourne.
Assistant Professor; Co-Director and Co-Founder of the Pediatric Depression Clinic, Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine, USA
Dr. Dwyer received her M.D. and her Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of California, Irvine. She completed her residency and fellowship training at Yale University and is a board-certified Child, Adolescent, and Adult Psychiatrist. She is an Assistant Professor at Yale in the Child Study Center and Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, where she co-directs the Yale Pediatric Depression Program. In addition to her clinical consultation work, she leads a research team that studies the effectiveness of novel interventions for pediatric depression and assesses the neural circuitry underlying therapeutic responses. She has been working in developmental pharmacology and neuroscience research for over 15 years and has been funded continuously for the past 7 years to study ketamine for pediatric depression. She and her colleagues published the first randomized controlled trial of ketamine for pediatric treatment resistant depression in the American Journal of Psychiatry in April of 2020. Dr. Dwyer recently received an NIMH grant to study ketamine in a larger pediatric clinical trial, which examines the safety and efficacy of ketamine for treating suicidal thinking in pediatric patients with treatment resistant depression. This trial also incorporates predictive neuroimaging to relate brain-based measures to treatment response. As a physician scientist, Dr. Dwyer continues to see patients as a clinical consultant and has devoted her research program to improving the understanding and treatment of pediatric refractory mood disorders.
Professor, Chair of Mood Disorders, Director of the Centre for Affective Disorders in the Department of Psychological Medicine in the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London, United Kingdom
Allan Young is the Chair of Mood Disorders and is Director of the Centre for Affective Disorders in the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, at King’s College London, UK (where he is also Head of School and Vice-Dean for Academic Psychiatry). Professor Young is the cluster and theme lead in the Translational Therapeutics Cluster at the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Mental Health Biomedical Research Centre. Professor Young is also the clinical academic lead in the Psychological Medicine and Integrated Care Clinical Academic Group in the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, where he is also a Consultant Psychiatrist and the head of the National Affective Disorders Service.
Professor Young is a member of several editorial boards and professional and scientific societies. He is Past-President of the International Society for Affective Disorders, immediate Past-President of the British Association of Psychopharmacology and the past Chair of the Special Committee for Psychopharmacology of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He is also a trustee of the patient and family charity, Bipolar UK, and an independent academic charity, The Drug Safety Research Unit.
Professor Young’s research interests focus on the causes of, and treatments for, severe psychiatric illnesses, particularly mood disorders. He has published more than 550 peer-reviewed publications and several books about psychopharmacology and affective disorders. His H-index on Google Scholar is 120.
Professor of Psychiatry and Youth Mental Health Director of the Institute for Mental Health, University of Birmingham, UK
Professor Matthew Broome BSc (Hons) MBChB (Hons) PGCAP PhD PhD FRCPsych (he/him)
Matthew Broome is Chair in Psychiatry and Youth Mental Health, and Director of the Institute for Mental Health at the University of Birmingham, Distinguished Research Fellow, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford, and Visiting Professor, Suor Orsola Benicasa University of Naples. In the NHS, Matthew is Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist to East Birmingham Early Intervention in Psychosis Team, Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, NIHR Clinical Research Network West Midlands Clinical Research Lead, and Clinical Lead Early Intervention in Psychosis, West Midlands, NHS England and Improvement. Matthew studied Pharmacology and Medicine at the University of Birmingham and trained in psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital, Bethlem Royal Hospital, and the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. Matthew has a PhD in Psychiatry from the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London, and in Philosophy from the University of Warwick. He is series editor to the OUP series, International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry and deputy editor of The British Journal of Psychiatry. He co-edited Risk Factors for Psychosis: Paradigms, Mechanisms, and Prevention. (Elsevier Press, 2020), The Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Psychopathology, (Oxford University Press, 2019), The AMDP System: Manual for Assessment and Documentation of Psychopathology in Psychiatry, (Hogrefe. 2017), The Maudsley Reader in Phenomenological Psychiatry (Cambridge University Press, 2013), and Psychiatry as Cognitive Neuroscience: Philosophical Perspectives, (Oxford University Press, 2009).
Matthew’s research interests include youth mental health, the prodromal phase of psychosis, early intervention in psychosis, delusion formation, mood instability, neurodevelopmental disorders, functional neuroimaging, interdisciplinary methods, mental health humanities, and the philosophy of psychiatry. His research is funded by the Wellcome Trust, NIH, MRC, NIHR, and the Wolfson Foundation.
Professor of Neuroscience & Society, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Ilina Singh is a Professor of Neuroscience & Society in the Department of Psychiatry and Co-Director of the Wellcome Centre for Ethics & Humanities at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on the social and ethical dimensions of research and innovation in biomedicine, neuroscience and psychiatry, with a focus on young people. As the inaugural recipient of a Wellcome Trust University Award in Biomedical Ethics (2008), Professor Singh pioneered the development of innovative methods to investigate young people’s experiences of authenticity, moral agency and personal responsibility in the context of psychiatric disorder. This early work motivated a Wellcome Trust Investigator Award in 2016 on the ethics of early intervention in child psychiatry (www.begoodeie.com). Since 2016, Prof Singh has also led a global collaborative project with the Stanley Centre at the Broad Institute of Harvard/MIT on the science and ethics of neuropsychiatric genomics in Africa (www.neurogene.org). Professor Singh currently leads the UK Pandemic Ethics Accelerator (www.pandemicethics.org), and serves on the advisory boards for the UKRI Adolescent Mental Health & Developing Mind Programme; the UKRI Covid-19 Response Call Taskforce; Vatican-Lancet Commission on the Value of Life. She has published widely, including in Nature, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Lancet, Social Science and Medicine, and the American Journal of Bioethics. She was an author-commissioner on the Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health and Sustainable Development (2018), and she has served as Editor/Editorial board on BioSocieties, American Journal of Bioethics-Neuroscience and Journal of Medical Ethics.
Senior Clinical Research Fellow, King’s College London (KCL), United Kingdom
Dr Evangelos Vassos is a Consultant Psychiatrist in Oxford Health Foundation NHS Trust and a Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, UK. Dr Vassos holds a Medical Degree and a Doctorate Degree from the Medical School of the University of Athens, Greece. He trained in psychiatry in Oxford, UK and he is a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK.
Dr Vassos is investigating genetic and environmental underpinnings of psychosis and mood disorders. His current work is focusing on the development and validation of risk estimation models for psychosis based on genetic and environmental risk factors. He is working on genome-wide association studies, polygenic score analysis, genetic epidemiology studies and the development of novel methodology for analysing and combining data from different sources. He is involved in international genetic consortia which are driving the field of psychiatric genetics forward. One of the most important goals of his research is to understand the complex interplay between genes and environment in the causation of mental illness.
Professor of Psychology in Clinical Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine, Associate Attending Psychologist at New York Presbyterian Hospital, USA
Dr. Dimitris Kiosses is Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine. He completed his undergraduate degree at Tufts University, his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at the Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies of Adelphi University, and his psychology internship at Hillside Hospital-Long Island Jewish Medical Center. He is a NY State licensed psychologist and has been trained in Cognitive Therapy at the Extramural Program of the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research. Dr. Kiosses is a principal investigator at the Weill Cornell Institute of Geriatric Psychiatry and the head of the Emotion, Cognition, and Psychotherapy Research Lab at Weill Cornell Medicine. His research focuses on the development and testing of psychosocial interventions for older adults with cognitive impairment, depression, suicidal ideation, and chronic pain. Dr. Kiosses’ recent interest is on mobile psychosocial interventions for late-life depression, suicide prevention, and for cognitively impaired older adults. He has received numerous federal and non-federal awards: from the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Aging, Alzheimer’s Association, Brain and Behavior Foundation, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and American Pain Society. Dr. Kiosses has collaborated nationally and internationally with Johns Hopkins University, University of Athens Medical School, Montefiore Medical Center, Stanford University, University College London, and Florida State University. He has served as Chair and Member of NIH review committees and has been a Triage Editor for the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and International Psychogeriatrics.
Professor Dr., Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, LMU Munich, Senior Physician, Head of Workgroup, Max Planck Fellow, Germany
Nikolaos Koutsouleris is the Chair of Precision Psychiatry at Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich (LMU) and King’s College London. He serves as consultant and Head of the Centre for Adolescent Psychiatry and Transitional Youth Mental Health and the Section for Precision Psychiatry at the Department of Psychiatry, LMU. He also serves as the Scientific Coordinator of the EU-FP7 funded project PRONIA (“Personalised Prognostic Tools for Early Psychosis Management”; www.pronia.eu).
Dr. Koutsouleris studied medicine at LMU between 1996 and 2003 as scholar of the German National Academic Foundation. He took his first medical & academic appointment in 2004 at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, where he finished his doctorate thesis in 2005. Since 2008, Prof Koutsouleris has advanced the use of multivariate pattern recognition methods for the identification and validation of diagnostic and prognostic prediction models in at-risk and early stages of affective and non-affective psychoses. His work was awarded with several national and international prizes and led so far to over 138 peer-reviewed papers. In addition, he strived to make robust machine-learning methods available to researchers in the clinical neurosciences in order to improve the methodological rigour of this new research direction based on the proper use of validation and model sharing approaches. These efforts have the lead to the publication of the open-source NeuroMiner
machine learning platform available at www.proniapredictors/neurominer/index.html.
Dr.,PhD Psychology Lab PT, Consultant Psychiatrist, NHS
Dr. Ritunnano is a Consultant Psychiatrist and Priestley PhD Scholar at Birmingham University’s Institute for Mental Health and the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Youth Mental Health. Her interests are inter-disciplinary, encompassing the phenomenological psychopathology of mental illness and its relationship with personal meanings, and the experience of hermeneutical injustice in mental health care. Her current research applies philosophical analysis and phenomenological methods to the investigation of delusional experiences in early psychosis, focusing on the relationship between self, world and meaning in life. Dr. Ritunnano is also Executive Committee Member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists SIG in Philosophy, and a member of the Phenomenology and Mental Health Network (The Collaborating Centre for Values-based Practice, St Catherine College, Oxford).
Professor Psykiatrisk Center København, Denmark
Merete Nordentoft is Professor in Psychiatry, University of Copenhagen. Merete Nordentoft played a leading role in developing and implementing early intervention services in Denmark. She is an expert in epidemiology, suicidal behaviour, psychopathology and early intervention in psychosis. She has led the process from research to implementation of early intervention services all over Denmark. Professor Nordentoft has worked with suicide prevention at a national level since 1997 and together with a group of epidemiologists from Nordic countries, she has demonstrated that life expectancy for people with schizophrenia is 15 to 20 years shorter than in the general population. She initiated the Danish High Risk and Resilience Study VIA 7 -a representative cohort study of 522 7 year old children with 0, 1, or 2 parents with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Professor Nordentoft was given the prestigious awards: The Golden Scalpel, Global Excellence in Health, the Richard Wyatt Award, the Marie and August Krogh Award and the Novo Nordisk Prize.
She was the president of IEPA from 2012 to 2014, and she has serves as general secretary for IASP
Dr. Hardy received her doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom. She has worked in specialist early psychosis services in both the UK and the US, including UCSF’s Prodrome Assessment Research and Treatment (PART) program, where she completed her post-doctoral fellowship, and as Clinical Director for the Prevention and Recovery from Early Psychosis (PREP) program.
Dr. Hardy has significant experience in providing CBTp to individuals with early psychosis, and those at risk of developing psychosis, in both individual and group settings and integration of this clinical intervention to broader systems and staff teams. She has led multiple trainings and workshops in CBTp to a wide variety of audiences including community clinicians, psychiatrists, and families, and provides ongoing supervision and consultation in this approach.
Dr. Hardy is also involved in the implementation of national strategies to increase dissemination of early psychosis models with the aim of bringing these cutting-edge treatments to a broader population.
MD, MA, Professor and Chair, Department of Psychiatry, and Associate Dean for Professional Development, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School Chief of Service, University Hospital
Petros Levounis, MD, MA, serves as professor and chair of the Department of Psychiatry and associate dean for professional development at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. Dr. Levounis came to Rutgers from Columbia University where he served as director of the Addiction Institute of New York from 2002 to 2013.
Dr. Levounis graduated from Athens College in 1981 and went on to earn his BA in chemistry and MS in biophysics at Stanford University, before receiving his medical education at Stanford and the Medical College of Pennsylvania. During medical school, he researched the effects of social class on patient-physician relationships in Oxford, England, and received an MA in sociology from Stanford. In 1994, he moved to New York City to train in psychiatry at the New York State Psychiatric Institute of Columbia University. He graduated from Columbia with the National Institute of Mental Health Outstanding Resident Award and then completed his fellowship in addiction psychiatry at New York University.
Dr. Levounis has written numerous articles, monographs, and book chapters; has lectured extensively on addiction topics throughout the United States and abroad; has received several major awards; and has been interviewed by CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, FOX, The Martha Stewart Radio Show, The New York Times, Kathimerini, and The Washington Post, among others. In 2017, he was elected as an honorary member of the World Psychiatric Association and, in 2022, as president-elect of the APA.
Dr. Levounis has published fourteen books including the self-help paperback “Sober Siblings: How to Help Your Alcoholic Brother or Sister—and Not Lose Yourself,” the textbook of “Substance Dependence and Co-Occurring Psychiatric Disorders,” “Motivational Interviewing for Clinical Practice,” “The Behavioral Addictions,” “Becoming Mindful,” “LGBTQ Mental Health: The Spectrum of Gender and Sexuality,” “Office-Based Buprenorphine Treatment of Opioid Use Disorder,” now in its second edition, and “Technological Addictions.” Dr. Levounis is currently working on the first textbook of Nature Therapy, which is going to be available in 2022. His books have been translated into French, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Dr. Levounis is married to actor Lukas Hassel and lives in New York City.
Executive director of Orygen, Professor of Youth Mental Health at The University of Melbourne
Professor Patrick McGorry is an Irish-born, Australian psychiatrist known world-wide for his development and scaling up of early intervention, youth mental health services, mental health innovation, advocacy and reform. He is executive director of Orygen, Professor of Youth Mental Health at the University of Melbourne, and founding editor of the journal “Early Intervention in Psychiatry”.
• 2005 he led the advocacy resulting in the establishment of the National Youth Mental Health Foundation, which later became Headspace, of which he is a founding board member.
• 2010 he was selected as Australian of the Year and became an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO).
• 2013 he received the Annual Research Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in Washington DC.
• 2015 was awarded the Lieber Prize for Schizophrenia Research by the US-based Brain and Behaviour Foundation.
• 2016 he became the first psychiatrist to be elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.
• 2018 he received the Schizophrenia International Research Society Lifetime Achievement Award.
• 2019 he received the Humanitarian Award of the Society of Biological Psychiatry and the NHMRC Research Excellence Award.
• 2019-2020 he was Chair of the Expert Advisory Committee to the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System.
Professor McGorry has published over 980 publications, with 47,266 citations and a “h” index of 112 (Scopus). He has played key advocacy and advisory roles to government on health system reform in Australia and many parts of the world.
He is President of the International Association for Youth Mental Health, Past-President of the Schizophrenia International Research Society, Past-president of the Society for Mental Health Research, and was Founding President and is now Treasurer of the IEPA: Early Intervention in Mental Health. He is also a Founding Board Member of Australians for Mental Health
Professor of Clinical Geriatrics and senior geriatrician; Center for Alzheimer Research Karolinska Institutet; Stockholm, Sweden
Miia Kivipelto, MD, PhD, is Professor in Clinical Geriatrics at Karolinska Institutet (KI), Center for Alzheimer Research and senior geriatrician and Director for Research & Development of Medical Unit Aging at Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden. Part of her Nordic Brain Network multidisciplinary research team (around 100 researchers and clinical staff) is located at University of Eastern Finland and Imperial College London, UK, where she has part time position as Professor. Her frontline research findings have been published in leading journals (340+ publications, H-index 78) and she has received numerous prestigious awards. Dr. Kivipelto’s translational research focuses on the prevention, early diagnosis and treatment of cognitive impairment, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Through epidemiological studies, Prof. Kivipelto has identified various lifestyle and vascular risk factors for dementia and interactions with genetic factors and clarified underlying mechanisms. She is the PI of the landmark FINGER trial and founder and scientific leader of World-Wide FINGERS network. Professor Kivipelto is often invited to leading global dementia conferences and task forces.
Philippe Conus was born and trained in Lausanne, first as an internal medicine specialist and then as a psychiatrist. After 3 years of training, he focused his interest on schizophrenia and psychosis and moved to Melbourne where he has worked as a consultant psychiatrist and clinical researcher between 2000 and 2003.
Besides clinical duties at EPPIC and PACE, Philippe has conducted, in collaboration with Martin Lambert, a large file audit study on first episode psychosis patients (FEPOS). Philippe has also developed a specialised program for first episode mania patients in the frame of which he conducted various research projects (medication, psychological intervention, prodromal phase of mania).
Since returning to Lausanne, Switzerland in 2003, Philippe has launched an early intervention program (TIPP) where more than 600 early psychosis patients have so far been treated. He has also developed a research program where he explores both clinical, epidemiological and neurobiological research questions, the latter in close collaboration with the lab of Professor Kim Do of the Centre of Psychiatric Neuroscience of our Department.
In 2011 Philippe was appointed as full Professor at the University of Lausanne and is head of the service of General Psychiatry as well as deputy head of the Department of Psychiatry. He is also president of SWEPP, the Swiss Early Psychosis Project, that was launched in 1998
University Medical Center Groningen, Netherlands
Marieke Begemann studied Neuropsychology at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She performed her PhD with Prof. Dr. Iris Sommer in the UMC Utrecht (Department of Psychiatry), studying the topic of childhood trauma as a risk factor for clinical and non-clinical psychotic symptoms. She combined her PhD activities with coordinating a multicenter randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial on simvastatin augmentation in recent-onset psychosis and a teaching position at Utrecht University, Department of Experimental Psychology. In 2017, Marieke was appointed as a postdoctoral research fellow in the UMC Groningen (Department of Biomedical Sciences of Cells and Systems) in the lab of Iris Sommer. She is project manager of the large HAMLETT-OPHELIA cohort,investigating the longterm aspects of antipsychotic medication. Collaborating with 23 Dutch health care institutions, 512 first-episode patients will be included across the Netherlands. Marieke was awarded a Travel Fellowship by the Schizophrenia International Research Society in 2018.
Dr Juliana Onwumere is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience King’s College London. She is also a Consultant Clinical Psychologist in the South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK.
Her complementary research and clinical interests focus on the intersectionality of mental health problems, family relationships, and health across the lifespan. She is interested in caregiving relationships affected by violence and the interface between mental and physical health.
Juliana has a growing interest in health inequalities particularly in racial and ethnic minority groups. Her work includes the development of evidence-based psycho-social interventions and workforce training and supervision initiatives to support their increased access by underserved groups.
As part of her interest in the application of digital technologies to address support and information needs of families affected by mental health problems, Juliana developed the world’s first massive open online course (MOOC) designed for carers of people with psychosis and schizophrenia
Professor of Social and Community Psychiatry, Warwick Medical School
Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist & Associate Medical Director, R&I, Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership Trust, UK
Director, Centre of Mental Health and Wellbeing Research, University of Warwick
NIHR Senior Investigator
Professor Swaran Preet Singh initially trained as a surgeon in New Delhi, changing to psychiatry after witnessing the effects of violent trauma on children and young people. He moved to UK in 1991, and as lecturer at Nottingham university, conducted research in first-episode psychosis and ethnic influences in mental health. He developed the first NHS-funded Early Intervention in Psychosis service in London in 2001, widely acknowledged for improving outcomes for young people with first episode of psychosis. In 2006, he joined Warwick University as Professor of Social and Community Psychiatry where he is Director of the interdisciplinary Centre for Mental Health & Wellbeing Research and an NHS Consultant Psychiatrist with the Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership Trust. His work on transitional care and early intervention was instrumental in major reforms of youth mental health care in UK and internationally. He is a founder member of the International Association of Youth Mental Health. He is currently leading several large-scale projects transforming mental health services in the Indian subcontinent and sub-Saharan Africa. He has published over 250 peer reviewed papers on culture & ethnicity in mental health, onset & outcomes of early psychosis, early intervention services, transition from child to adult care, global mental health, mental health law & medical education.
He was Commissioner for Equality & Human Rights Commission (2013-19), mandated by the UK parliament and led the Independent Investigation into Discrimination (including Islamophobia) within the Conservative Party- The Singh Investigation (https://singhinvestigation.co.uk)
Laura D. Baker, PhD is Professor of Internal Medicine, Neurology, and Public Health Sciences at Wake Forest School of Medicine, and Associate Director of the NIA-supported Wake Forest Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA. She is an international leader in the areas of cognitive aging and lifestyle interventions to protect brain health and prevent cognitive decline, Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.
Dr. Baker has been an investigator of over 55 clinical studies on aging and Alzheimer’s disease prevention and treatment, including a multisite study in the U.S. that tested whether regular exercise can protect against continued cognitive decline in older adults with amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment.
Dr. Baker is also a Principal Investigator of the large multi-site study supported by the Alzheimer’s Association that is testing whether healthy changes in lifestyle can protect cognitive function in older Americans who may be at risk for memory decline in the future. This study, referred to as “U.S. POINTER” is part of a global network of other similar lifestyle intervention studies now conducted in over 35 countries worldwide.