Partners
Andreas Reif
Goethe University Frankfurt is one of the leading Universities in Germany; the Medical Faculty was positioned among the 75 best Universities worldwide in the Shanghai Ranking Clinical Medicine and Pharmacy of 2012. The Department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy at the University Hospital of Frankfurt (Head: Prof. Dr. A. Reif) is uniquely and ideally suited to carry out translational research in psychiatry. Key research questions revolve around developmental psychiatry, precision medicine approaches in psychiatry including biomarker discovery, and translational psychiatry with focus on the pathophysiology of ADHD, bipolar disorder, and major depression. On the one hand, there is access to large patient samples, as the Department features >150 inpatient beds, room for 30 day-patients, and large outpatient facilities specialised for patients suffering e.g. from ADHD and affective disorders. Beyond treatment as usual, there is an extensive and elaborate clinical research framework including early recognition of psychiatric disorders, cognitive remediation, long-term follow-up of patients including neuropsychological /-imaging examinations and a wide variety of neuroimaging and neurostimulation tools. Patient enrolment and phenotyping using digital biomarkers, as planned in DynAMoND, is already implemented in the clinical core structure of the Department. There is a routine for the biobanking of cognitive and fluid biomarkers including DNA and proteomic samples. The Department’s expertise in serving as a core biobank and genotyping center is also evidenced by contribution to several networks on psychiatric genetics (IMpACT, ConLiGen, PGC, MooDS) as well as participation in multi-site studies such as the BipoLife network and the EU-funded projects CoCA and MiND. Prof. Reif has published more than 500 peer-reviewed papers and is involved in the German guidelines for unipolar depression, bipolar disorder and ADHD, and board member of the German Psychiatry Association (DGPPN) and ECNP.
Jan Haavik
I am a molecular neuroscientist and clinical psychiatrist with an interest in applying new methods to studies of the brain and human brain diseases.
I am professor of biomedicine and leader of the Neurotargeting Research Group at The University of Bergen. I was director of a multidisciplinary center of excellence (K.G.Jebsen Centre for Neuropsychiatric Disorders) during 2011-2018. I have a 20 % position as senior consultant in clinical psychiatry at Haukeland University Hospital. I am a board-certified specialist of adult psychiatry. From 2002, I have been working as senior consultant in psychiatry at Haukeland University hospital, with a special focus on ADHD and affective disorders. Meeting and treating patients with severe mental disorders have always been an important source of inspiration.
My early work included structural and mechanistic studies of key enzymes involved in the synthesis of serotonin and catecholamine transmitters, demonstration of their involvement in human neurological and psychiatric disease and genome wide and targeted genetic studies of bipolar disorder and ADHD.Our research group has characterized the active site structure, reaction mechanism, and regulation by phosphorylation and dephosphorylation of several human enzymes, including tyrosine hydroxylase, tryptophan hydroxylases and pyridoxal dependent decarboxylases, all key to neurotransmitter synthesis.In 2007 I co-founded the International Multi-Centre persistent ADHD Collaboration (IMpACT). We have performed clinical, epidemiological and MRI-imaging/biomarker studies of psychiatric disorders. By extensive international interdisciplinary collaboration, we have discovered of new risk genes and treatment targets across diagnostic boundaries. We have also developed new animal models and shown how old drugs may be repurposed for new indications.
I have participated in ten EU-funded projects, including 3 ongoing H2020 EU projects. I have mainly worked at universities and hospitals in Norway. I have also been visiting scientist (up to one year at each site) at six other research institutions in Sweden, Scotland, Germany, France, the United States and the Netherlands.
Giovanni de Girolamo
Giovanni de Girolamo is the former Scientific Director and the Head of the Unit of Epidemiological Psychiatry at the IRCCS Istituto Centro San Giovanni di Dio in Brescia, Italy, leading clinical research centre in mental health located in Northern Italy. He is also Professor of Psychiatry at the Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Milan. From 1988 to 1994, he worked at the Division of Mental Health of WHO in Geneva under the guidance of Norman Sartorius. From 1998 to 2001 he was the coordinator of the National Mental Health Project, based at the Italian N.I.H. in Rome, which involved 27 specific research projects and more than 100 centres throughout Italy. He has set up and directed several large multicentre projects, including PROGRES, PROGRES-Acute, WHO World Mental Health Survey Initiative (Italian site), PREMIA, MILESTONE, VIORMED, EU-VIORMED, INTERPRET-DD project and DIAPASON. His research focuses on psychiatric epidemiology and health services research, schizophrenia, early interventions and forensic psychiatry. He is the co-author of 503 publications, including 41 volumes or monographs, 388 articles (281 indexed in Pubmed), and 76 book chapters. He has an H-index of 87 (Scopus, February 2022).
Nader Perroud
Nader Perroud is a psychiatrist, psychotherapist and specialist in borderline personality disorder and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). He was trained in two psychotherapeutic approaches to borderline personality disorder, dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and mentalization-based treatment (MBT). Nader Perroud is in charge of a Unit at the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG), a specialized Unit for people who have difficulty regulating their emotions and show great impulsivity. He is also a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Geneva and regularly gives courses and conferences and has written several books dealing directly or indirectly with borderline personality disorder and/or ADHD.
Josep Antoni Ramos-Quiroga
Department of Mental Healht, Hospital Universitari Vall d’Hebron, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Vall d’Hebron Reserach Institute, CIBERSAM, Barcelona, Spain
Josep Antoni Ramos-Quiroga, MD, PhD, is a psychiatrist and 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) and CIBERSAM. Professor Ramos-Quiroga is President of the Innovation Commission at HUVH, a member of the Scientific Committee of VHIR and ex-Chair of the Neurodevelopmental Disorders Across Lifespan section of the European Psychiatric Association.
Professor Ramos-Quiroga has published more than 260 articles in the field of genetics, psychopharmacology, neurodevelopmental disorders and depression (h-index: 57). He is also VHIR’s Principal Investigator 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 ADHD-ECNP Network).
Ulrich Ebner-Priemer
Ulrich Ebner-Priemer is a psychologist and head of the department of the mental mHealth Lab at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. The mental mHealth Lab is a leading institution on mHealth approaches for mental disorders. The lab is characterized by its methodological focus on Ambulatory Assessment (sometimes also called EMA, ESM or digital phenotyping). Covered by national and international grants, Ulrich Ebner-Priemer’s lab provides the technological mHealth framework, real-time compliance monitoring, and expertise on data analyses for multiple studies which assess momentary mechanisms in daily life, monitor illness trajectories over months and years, and provide mHealth interventions. Together with its technological partner movisens, the mental mHealth Lab developed an unique system of connected assessment tools with real-time analysis and feedback capabilities. The lab has published more than 100 papers on mHealth, covering a broad range of mental disorders (Borderline personality disorder, ADHD, PTSD, bipolar disorders, major depressive disorder, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, alcohol use disorder, etc.). Ulrich Ebner-Priemer was president of the Society for Ambulatory Assessment (SAA), the international society for mHealth, and is the current chair of the ECNP network “digital Health”.
Roland Hasler
Dr Roland Hasler received his PhD in Neuroscience from the Lemanic Neuroscience Doctoral School at the University of Geneva, Switzerland.
He is currently working as a Scientific Officer at the Department of Psychiatric Specialties of the University Hospital of Geneva.
He specializes in adult ADHD, borderline personality disorder and bipolar disorder, and has extensive expertise in dimensions such as impulsivity, anger, emotional dysregulation, as well as in childhood abuse and its repercussions in adulthood.
He has published more than fifty scientific articles at the international level on this subject, dealing with gene-environment interaction, electrophysiology and brain functionality.
His other areas of interest are the influence of spirituality on epigenetic mechanisms and quantum physics in neuroscience.