2018 Plenary Speakers

Mario Alvarez-Jimenez, Ph.D.

Associate Professor and Head, E-Health at Orygen, The National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health and The Centre for Youth Mental Health, University of Melbourne

A/Prof Alvarez-Jimenez leads a large multidisciplinary team focused on bringing about long-term psychosocial recovery in youth mental health through online social media-based technologies, virtual reality and new models of psychotherapy. He is also a registered clinical psychologist and continues to work clinically with young people suffering from mental disorders.

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL. She is Leader of the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Group and Deputy Director of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. Her group’s research focuses on brain development in human adolescence. Blakemore has won several awards for her research, including the British Psychological Society Spearman Medal 2011, the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award 2013 and the Klaus J Jacobs Prize 2015.

Edward T. Bullmore

Head of Department of Psychiatry, Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute, University of Cambridge

Ed Bullmore, MB, PhD, FRCP FRCPsych, FMedSci, trained in medicine at the University of Oxford and St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London; then in psychiatry at the Bethlem Royal & Maudsley Hospital, London. He moved to Cambridge as Professor of Psychiatry in 1999 and is currently Co-Chair of Cambridge Neuroscience, Scientific Director of the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre, and Head of the Department of Psychiatry, in the University. He has published more than 500 scientific papers and in 2016 he was listed by Thomson Reuters as one of the most highly cited scientists worldwide in Neuroscience & Behaviour and in Psychology & Psychiatry.

Dr. Helen Fisher

Senior Lecturer,
Social Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London

Dr. Helen Fisher is a psychologist and senior lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London. Her focus is on the causes and treatment of psychosis in young adults.

Dr. Takao Hensch

Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Professor of Neurology Harvard University

Takao K. Hensch, PhD, is joint professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School at Boston Children’s Hospital, and professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard’s Center for Brain Science. He currently directs the NIMH Silvio O. Conte Center at Harvard, and conducts basic neuro-biological research on developmental critical periods and the origins of mental illness.

Steven E. Hyman, MD

Director, Stanley Center
for Psychiatric Research, Harvard Department of Stem Cell
and Regenerative Biology,
Broad Institute,
former NIH Director

Currently I am focused on ways of exploiting the emerging genetics of neuropsychiatric disorders to develop models that will ultimately facilitate the discovery of much needed new therapeutics. Previously my lab had studied intracellular signaling and regulation of gene expression within brain dopamine systems.

Nev Jones, Ph.D.

Nev Jones is a community psychologist focused on early intervention, community-based mental health services, participatory methods and the phenomenology and sociocultural determinants of psychosis. She is strongly committed to client and stakeholder participation and leadership in research.

John M. Kane, MD

Senior Vice President for Behavioral Health Services, Northwell Health;
Professor & Chairman,  Psychiatry, Donald and Barbara Zucker
School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell; Chairman, Psychiatry, The Zucker Hillside Hospital

Dr. Kane has been the principal investigator for research projects focusing on schizophrenia psychobiology, treatment and recovery, as well as improving the quality and cost of care. He is the author of over 450 peer-reviewed papers and serves on the editorial boards of numerous journals.

Inez Myin-Germeys

Professor of Psychiatry, Center for Contextual Psychiatry, Research group Psychiatry Leuven, Belgium KU Leuven

Inez Myin-Germeys (º1972) is trained as a psychologist and is currently professor of Psychiatry at KU Leuven, Belgium. She worked for 20 years at Maastricht University in the Netherlands where she started her research line on experience sampling methodology in the study of severe mental illness, specifically psychosis (awarded with an ERC consolidator grant).