Dr Pedro Ruiz is currently Professor & Executive Vice Chair as well as Director of Clinical Programs at the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Born in Cuba, Dr Ruiz completed his medical school education at the University of Paris in France. Subsequently, he conducted his graduate training in general psychiatry at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Thereafter, he joined the faculty at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City where he rose from instructor to Professor of Psychiatry. In this academic institution he occupied a series of administrative and academic positions, such as, Director of the Lincoln Hospital Community Mental Health Center (1969-1977), Assistant Dean (1977-1979), Director of Bronx Psychiatric Center (1979-1981) and Vice Chair of the Department of Psychiatry (1979-1981).

Dr Ruiz was also tenured Professor of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine (1981-1993) and at the University of Texas at Houston (1993-2010), where he also was Interim Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Dr Ruiz has also been President of the American Psychiatric Association (2006-2007), the American College of Psychiatrists (2000-2001), the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (2002-2003) and the American Association of Social Psychiatry (2000-2002). Currently, he is President of the World Psychiatric Association (2011-2014). Dr Ruiz has also served in more than 40 editorial boards in the United States and abroad and has also authored more than 600 publications; among them, “Substance Abuse: A Comprehensive Textbook” and the Ninth Edition of “Kaplan & Sadock’s Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry”.

Conference Title: Early on set psychoses: not as rare as thought?

Celso Arango, MD, PhD is a psychiatrist and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Maryland in Baltimore and the Universidad Complutense in Madrid. He is also Head of the Child and Adolescent Department of Psychiatry at Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón. Dr. Arango is the Scientific Director of the Spanish Psychiatric Research Network with 25 centers and more than 400 researchers. He is also Coordinator of the Child and Adolescent First-Episode Psychosis Study (CAFEPS) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Health (with eight centers in Spain) and the Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry Network funded by the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP). He has written more than 200 peer-reviewed articles, 6 books, and more than 30 book chapters. Many of his articles and book chapters have focused on the neurobiology of early-onset and first-episode psychoses as well as the safety of psychiatric medications in pediatric patients. In addition, his group has shown how patients with a first psychotic episode experience greater losses of gray matter than expected and a correlation of gray matter loss with antioxidant status. Dr. Arango has participated in more than 56 competitively funded research projects, as Principal Investigator in 41 of them, including projects with international funding (Stanley Foundation, NARSAD, European Commission, etc.) and several clinical drug trials. He is also coordinator of several multicenter projects that assess multiple prognostic factors and treatment in early-onset psychosis, and is currently participating in five EU projects funded by the VII Framework.

Conference Title: Solving the Enigma of Brain, Mind and Psychosis Yields New Treatment Approaches

JIM VAN OS MD, PHD, MRCPSYCH Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Chairman, Department of Psychiatry and Psychology, Maastricht University Medical Centre,  Maastricht, The Netherlands

Jim van Os is Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychology at Maastricht University Medical Centre, Maastricht, The Netherlands, and Visiting Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology at the Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK. He trained in Psychiatry in Casablanca (Morocco), Bordeaux (France) and finally at the Institute of Psychiatry and the Maudsley/Bethlem Royal Hospital in London (UK) and after his clinical training was awarded a three-year UK Medical Research Council Training Fellowship in Clinical Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He is on the editorial board of several European and US psychiatric journals such as Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, European Psychiatry, Psychological Medicine, Schizophrenia Research, Schizophrenia Bulletin, Early Intervention in Psychiatry, Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, Psychosis Journal and The Journal of Mental Health.

Jim van Os is coordinator of a €12M EU FP7 IP project on gene-environment interactions in schizophrenia, and is also active in clinical gene-environment interaction research in depression and bipolar disorder.

He is a member of the Psychosis Group of the DSM-V Task Force, and was co-chair of the APA DSM/ICD conference Deconstructing Psychosis.

In 2011, he was elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He is Director of Psychiatric Services at Maastricht University Medical Centre and runs a service for treatment-resistant depression and first episode psychosis.

Contribution to brain research Prof. van Os has strived to contribute to the area of brain-mind interface in a non-reductionistic fashion, focusing on the distribution of mental states in the population as related to mental ill-health, and the gene-environment interactions underlying these. He has developed and validated the theory that expression of mental ill-health can be traced to variation in normal mentation, establishing experiential and aetiological links between normal and pathological mental states. In his recent paper in Nature, he has argued that   Areas of interest this include the clinical, cognitive and genetic epidemiology of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and depression, in particular the study of variation in overlapping dimensions of these disorders in the general population and the underlying cognitive factors and gene-environment interactions driving this variation. Treatment studies focus on implementation of Assertive Outreach and CBT in routine mental health settings, and aspects of patient-professional carer communication.

Bibliographic indices:

Hirsch factor (Web of Science): 60 PubMed peer-reviewed publications: 544 PhD Theses directed by Prof. van Os at Maastricht University: 36

Recent publications:

van Os, J. & Kapur, S. (2009) Schizophrenia. Lancet, 374, 635-645. Van Os, J., Kenis, G. & Rutten, B. (2010) The Environment and Schizophrenia. Nature, 468,  203-212. van Os, J. (2009) ‘Salience syndrome’ replaces ‘schizophrenia’ in DSM-V and ICD-11: psychiatry’s evidence-based entry into the 21st century? Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 120, 363-372. Van Os, J., Linscott, R.J., Myin-Germeys, I., Delespaul, P. & Krabbendam, L. (2009) A systematic review and meta-analysis of the psychosis continuum: evidence for a psychosis proneness-persistence-impairment model of psychotic disorder. Psychological Medicine, 39, 179-195.

 

Conference Title: Schizophrenia – How can we improve course and outcome?

Wolfgang Gäebel MD, Profersor of Psychiatry, born 1947 in Braunschweig, Germany, is Professor of Psychiatry, Director of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the Heinrich-Heine University, Duesseldorf, and Head of the LVR Klinikum Duesseldorf.

Professor Gäebel qualified in medicine at the Free University of Berlin (FUB), Germany, then took up postgraduate training in Neurology at Rudolf-Virchow-Hospital in Berlin and Psychiatry at the Department of Psychiatry at the FUB. After specializing in Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Neurology he continued working as Research Assistant, then Senior Psychiatrist at the Department of Psychiatry at the FUB, at the same time becoming appointed as State Physician for Mentally Handicapped Persons at the Senator for Health and Social Affairs in Berlin. In 1989 he obtained a grant of the German Research Foundation for a Research Stay at the Department of Psychology at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. In 1992 he took up his present position.   During his career, Professor Gaebel has held positions as President of the German Society of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Nervous Diseases (DGPPN, 1995/6), and President of the German Society of Biological Psychiatry (DGBP, 1999/02). He was Chair of the Organizing Committee of the 11th World Congress of Psychiatry, Hamburg, 1999. He is Vice President of the Association of the Scientific Medical Societies in Germany (AWMF), member of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher LEOPOLDINA, member of several National Ethical Committees, chairman of the Section on Schizophrenia as well as co-chairman of the Section on Quality Assurance and honorary member of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), and chairman of the Taskforce on Nosology and Psychopathology of the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry (WFSBP), with effect of December 2009 Chair of the Aktionskreis Psychiatrie e.V. Since 2010 he is Member of the Expert Platform on Depression, Lundbeck International Neuroscience Foundation.

Prof. Gäebel was again elected as President of the German Society of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Nervous Diseases (DGPPN) for the period 2007 – 2008. He was elected as a Board Member of the European Psychiatric Association (EPA) with effect of 01 January 2009 and he was elected as co-chairman of the EPA Section on Schizophrenia.

His research focus includes clinical, pharmacological, and neurophysiological aspects of schizophrenia, experimental psychopathology, treatment guidelines and quality management, and research on stigma and discrimination. He is Speaker of several research networks, e.g. the German Research Network on Schizophrenia (GRNS), funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research. In 2007 on behalf of the GRNS Professor Gaebel initiated the 1st European Conference on Schizophrenia Research in Duesseldorf, co-sponsored by AEP and WPA. In 2009 the 2nd European Conference on Schizophrenia Research took place in Berlin.

His current interest is on the development of diagnosis and classification towards ICD-11 and DSM-5; he is member of the Global Scientific Partnership Network appointed by WHO and member of WHO International Advisory Group for the Revision of ICD-10 Mental and Behavioural Disorders. He is chair of the WHO-Workgroup on Psychosis for ICD-11. Since 2008 he is member of the DSM-5 Psychotic Disorders Workgroup of the American Psychiatric Association.

Professor Gäebel has published about 600 scientific articles and is editor or author of about 40 books/supplements on a range of topics.

Conference Title: Neurocircuitry of Addictions

Nora D. Volkow, MD Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) National Institutes of Health

Dr. Volkow became Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the National Institutes of Health in May 2003. NIDA supports most of the world’s research on the health aspects of drug abuse and addiction.

Her work has been instrumental in demonstrating that drug addiction is a disease of the human brain.  As a research psychiatrist and scientist, Dr. Volkow pioneered the use of brain imaging to investigate the toxic effects of drugs and their addictive properties.  Her studies have documented long lasting changes in the dopamine system affecting the actions of frontal brain regions involved with motivation, reward and inhibitory control in drug addicted subjects. She has also made important contributions to the neurobiology of obesity, ADHD, and the behavioral changes that occur with aging.

Dr. Volkow was born in Mexico, attended the Modern American School, and earned her medical degree from the National University of Mexico in Mexico City, where she received the Premio Robins award for best medical student of her generation.  Her psychiatric residency was at New York University, where she earned the Laughlin Fellowship Award as one of the 10 Outstanding Psychiatric Residents in the USA.

She spent most of her professional career at the Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in Upton, New York, where she held several leadership positions including Director of Nuclear Medicine, Chairman of the Medical Department, and Associate Director for Life Sciences.  In addition, Dr. Volkow was a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Associate Dean of the Medical School at the State University of New York (SUNY)-Stony Brook.

Dr. Volkow has published more than 495 peer-reviewed articles and more than 90 book chapters and non-peer reviewed manuscripts, and has also edited three books on the use of neuroimaging in studying mental and addictive disorders.

During her professional career, she has been the recipient of multiple awards, including her selection for membership in the Institute of Medicine in the National Academy of Sciences.  She was recently named one of Time Magazine’s “Top 100 People Who Shape our World”, and was included as one of the 20 people to watch by Newsweek magazine in its “Who’s Next in 2007″ feature.  She was also named “Innovator of the Year” by U.S. News & World Report in 2000.

Conference Title: Latest developments in the management of bipolar disorder

Eduard Vieta is Professor of Psychiatry, Head of the Department, and the Director of the Bipolar Disorders Program of the Hospital Clinic at the University of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain. He is the current Director of the Bipolar Research Program at the Spanish Research Network on Mental Diseases (CIBERSAM), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. His research focuses on the neurobiology and treatment of bipolar disorder. In 2005, Professor Vieta received the Aristotle award and, in 2007, the Mogens Schou award, considered the highest honour in the area of bipolar disorder research. He has made significant contributions to many of the published bipolar disorder treatment guidelines and has authored more than 400 original articles, 200 book chapters and 27 complete books. Furthermore, he is on the editorial board of a range of international scientific journals.

Conference Title: Anxiety Disorders: An Integrative Approach

Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health University of Cape Town, South Africa

Dan J Stein is Professor and Chair of the Dept of Psychiatry and Mental Health at the University of Cape Town, Director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Unit on Anxiety Disorders, and Visiting Professor of Psychiatry at Mt.  Sinai Medical School in New York.  Prof Stein did his undergraduate and medical degrees at the University of Cape Town, and his doctorate (in the area of clinical neuroscience) at the University of Stellenbosch.  He trained in psychiatry, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship (in the area of psychopharmacology) at Columbia University.  His training also includes a doctorate in philosophy. Prof Stein’s research focuses on the psychobiology and management of the anxiety disorders, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and social anxiety disorder.  His work ranges from basic neuroscience all the way through to epidemiological and cross-cultural research.  He is particularly enthusiastic about the possibility of clinical practice and scientific research that integrates theoretical concepts and empirical data across these different levels. Prof Stein’s work has been continuously funded by extramural grants for close to 20 years.  He has authored or edited over 25 volumes, including “Cognitive-Affective Neuroscience of Mood and Anxiety Disorders”, and “The Philosophy of Psychopharmacology:  Smart Pills, Happy Pills, Pep Pills”.  He has contributed to many articles and chapters.  He is a recipient of CINP’s Max Hamilton Memorial Award for his contribution to psychopharmacology.

 

Conference Title: Psychiatric Illness in Children and Adolescents: Risk and Prevention

Judith L. Rapoport MD is a graduate of Swarthmore College, and Harvard Medical School. Since 1986 she has been Chief of the Child Psychiatry Branch at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda MD. Her clinical research training was at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston and St Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington DC. Research Training included two years at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. Dr. Rapport’s work has been influential in the areas of Diagnosis in Child Psychiatry, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Childhood Onset Schizophrenia. She is the author or coauthor of over 300 papers and five books. Her book on OCD: “The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Washing” was a New York Times Best Seller. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Conference Title: Prediction of Disease Vulnerability and Treatment Response in Mood Disorders: Personalized Medicine in Psychiatry

Dr. Nemeroff was born in New York City in 1949 and educated in the New York City Public School System. After graduating from the City College of New York in 1970, he enrolled in graduate school at Northeastern University and received a Master’s degree in Biology in 1973. He received his MD and PhD (Neurobiology) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His residency training in psychiatry was conducted at both the University of North Carolina and at Duke University, after which he joined the faculty of Duke University. At Duke, he was Professor of Psychiatry and Pharmacology and Chief of the Division of Biological Psychiatry before relocating in 1991 to Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, where he served as the Reunette W. Harris Professor and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences until 2008. In 2009, he joined the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine as the Leonard M. Miller Professor and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. His research has concentrated on the biological basis of the major neuropsychiatric disorders, including affective disorders, schizophrenia, and anxiety disorders. His clinical research is focused on the use of genetic, neuroendocrine, neuroimaging, and neurochemical methods to comprehensively understand the pathophysiology of depression. In recent years, he has uncovered the neurobiological mechanisms that mediate the increased risk for depression in victims of child abuse. He has also contributed to seminal findings in the burgeoning area of research concerning the relationship of depression to cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Nemeroff has received numerous honors during his career, including the A.E. Bennett Award from the Society of Biological Psychiatry (1979), the Judith Silver Memorial Young Scientist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (1989), both the Kempf Award in Psychobiology (1989) and the Samuel Hibbs Award (1990) from the American Psychiatric Association (APAP), and the Gold Medal Award and the Research Prize (1996) from the Society of Biological Psychiatry. In 1993, he was awarded the Edward J. Sachar Award from Columbia University and the Edward A. Strecker Award from the Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital. In 1997, he was the recipient of the Gerald Klerman Award from the National Depressive and Manic-Depressive Disorders Association and the Selo Prize from the National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Depression. In 1998, he was the recipient of the Research Award in Mood Disorders from the American College of Psychiatrists, and in 1999 he received the Bowis Award from the same organization. He was awarded the Menninger Prize in 2000 from the American College of Physicians, the Research Award from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention in 2001, and the Burlingame Prize from the Institute of Living in 2002. In 2006, he received the American Psychiatric Association Research Mentoring Award and Vestermark Award, and in 2008 The Judson Marmor Award for Research. Dr. Nemeroff served as the Editor-in-Chief of Neuropsychopharmacology (2001-2006). With Alan F. Schatzberg, MD, he is co-Editor of the Textbook of Psychopharmacology, now in its fourth edition, published by the American Psychiatric Press Inc. He has served on the Mental Health Advisory Council of the National Institutes of Mental Health and the Biomedical Research Council for NASA. He is past President of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology and the American College of Psychiatrists. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. He is chair of the APA Committee on Research Training. In 2002 he was elected as a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

Conference Title: The bioethical imperative in psychiatry

Profesor, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile Director, Interdisciplinary Center for Studies on Bioethics, University of Chile Voluntary Faculty, Department of Psychiatry, Miller School of Medicine, Miami, USA Consultant to WPA Ethics Committee Member of the Ethics Committee, World Federation of Societies for Biological Psychiatry

Fellow and Alumni-Prize, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany Bellagio Scholar, The Rockefeller Foundation, USA Former Member of the UNESCO International Bioethics Committee Former President, Chilean Society ofr Neurology, Neurosurgey and Psychiatry Former Member, WPA Nominations Committee

Doctor Honoris Causa (San Marcos University, Lima, Peru; Ricardo Palma University, Lima, Peru; University of Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina; Oniversity of Cordoba, Argentina; University of Jequitinohna e Mucurí, Minas Gerais, Brazil)

Honorary Appointments at universities of Europe, USA, and Latin America

Member of the Chilean Academy of Language Corresponding Member, Royal Spanish Academy

Editorial Activities (selected and current)

Acta Bioethica World Psychiatry BMC Medical Ethics Transcultural Psychiatry Revista de Psiquiatrìa (Madrid) Actas Españolas de Psiquiatría Salud Mental Naturwissenschaft, Technik, Medizin

Conference Title: The simple truth about the genetic complexity of schizophrenia

Dr. Weinberger is Director and CEO of the Lieber Institute for Brain Development at the Johns Hopkins Medical Center.  He was formally Director of the Genes, Cognition, and Psychosis Program of the Intramural Research Program, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.  He attended college at the Johns Hopkins University and medical school at the University of Pennsylvanian and did residencies in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and in neurology at George Washington University.  He is board certified in both psychiatry and neurology.  Dr. Weinberger’s research has focused on brain mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis and treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders, especially schizophrenia.  His work has defined dysfunctional neural systems in the brain that appear to underlie many of the clinical symptoms of the illness.  He was instrumental in focusing research on the role of abnormal brain development as a risk factor for schizophrenia.  His lab identified the first specific genetic mechanism of risk for schizophrenia, and the first genetic effects that account for variation in specific human cognitive functions and in human temperament.  In addition, he and his colleagues developed the first high fidelity animal model of schizophrenia.   In 2003, Science magazine highlighted the genetic research of his lab as the second biggest scientific breakthrough of the year, second to the origins of the cosmos.   He is the recipient of many honors and awards, including the K.J. Zulch Prize of the Max Planck Society, the NIH Directors Award, The Roche-Nature Medicine Neuroscience Award, The William K. Warren Medical Research Institute Award, the  Adolf Meyer Prize of the American Psychiatric Association, the Research Prize of the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry, the Gold Medal Award of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, the Foundation’s Fund Prize from the American Psychiatric Association, and the Lieber Prize of the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Affective Disorders. He is past president of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, past President of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology and has been elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.  He sits on the editorial boards of sixteen scientific journals.  He has published over five hundred scientific articles and has authored or edited eight books.