Since 1974 Dr. Belmaker has held positions in academic psychiatry in Israel. He chaired the local committee of the CINP meeting in Jerusalem in 1982. Dr. Belmaker's 1976 paper in Nature on lithium and second messengers was one of the first in the field. In 1994 he received a NARSAD Distinguished Investigator Award on transcranial magnetic stimulation and has co-edited a book on TMS for psychiatrists. His 1996 paper in Nature Genetics on dopamine D-4 receptor polymorphisms and human personality was a landmark in the field.

He has received the Anna Monika Prize for Research in Depression (1983), the Ziskind-Somerfeld Prize for Senior Research in Biological Psychiatry (1993), the ECNP Lilly Research Award (1996), the NARSAD Falcone Award for research in affective disorder (2000) and the Research Prize of the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry (2004). From 1998 to 2008 he was Associate Editor of Bipolar Disorders.  He published a review of bipolar disorder in 2004 and a review of major depressive disorder in 2008, in the New England Journal of Medicine.

He served for 10 years as Chairman of his Department of Psychiatry and remains Associate Director of the Beersheva Mental Health Center. He sees patients every Monday in his public Mood Disorders Clinic and is actively involved in clinical trials as well as laboratory research.

Dr. Lars Farde has been Professor of Psychiatry at Karolinska Institutet since 1997 and is Chief Scientist in the CNS and Pain research area at AstraZeneca. Lars Farde graduated from medical school at the University of Umea in 1978 after which he moved to Stockholm for a residency in Psychiatry at the Karolinska Hospital. His PhD thesis on “Dopamine receptor characteristics in the living human brain” was presented in 1987. Dr. Farde’s research strategy is multidisciplinary and translational. He has contributed substantially to the development of Positron Emission Tomography as a methodology for quantitative imaging of brain neuroreceptors. The development includes original radioligands such as [11C]raclopride and [11C]SCH23390. The methods were subsequently used in clinical studies on the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. He was the first to demonstrate relationships between central dopamine receptor occupancy and clinical effects of antipsychotic drugs. This discovery initiated a series of pioneering studies on the use of brain imaging in drug development. He has more recently pioneered research on correlations between dopamine receptor number and human personality traits, an area which is or particular interest in relation to the anhedonia and social withdrawal that characterize several patients with schizophrenia. Dr. Farde has received five international awards.

Hans-Jürgen Möller has been working in the field of psychiatry for 30 years. After obtaining his Doctor of Medical Science in 1972 from the Universities of Göttingen and Hamburg, Germany, he then specialised in psychiatry and postgraduate training at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich. Professor Möller completed a postdoctoral thesis (habilitation) in psychiatry in 1979. From 1980 to 1988 he was professor of psychiatry at Munich Technical University, and from 1988 to 1994 full professor of psychiatry and chairman of the Psychiatric Department at the University Bonn, Bonn, Germany. He is currently full professor of psychiatry and chairman of the Psychiatric Department at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich.

Professor Möller’s main scientific contributions include clinical and neurobiological research into psychiatry, schizophrenia and depression and clinical psychopharmacology. He has been a member of the boards (executive committees) of several national and international psychiatric societies, and for two years he has been a member of the CINP executive committee. From 1997 to 2001 he was president of the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry. Currently, he is president-elect of the CINP. In addition to authoring and co-authoring over 400 international publications and several books, he is also chief editor of The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry, main editor of European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, and editor of two psychiatric journals, Nervenarzt and Psychopharmakotherapie. He holds positions on the editorial boards of numerous national and international psychiatric journals.

In 2008 Professor Möller was awarded the prestigious Jean Delay Prize from the World Psychiatric Association.

W. Wolfgang Fleischhacker, MD, is Vice Chair and Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at Innsbruck University Clinics in Austria, where he also serves as head of the Biological Psychiatry Division. He is a certified psychiatrist and psychotherapist with a specialty in behavioural therapy.
After receiving his medical degree from Innsbruck University, Dr. Fleischhacker trained at the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurology of the Medical Faculty there. In 1987 he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and spent 18 months at Hillside Hospital in New York.
Dr. Fleischhacker is a member of the editorial boards of several peer reviewed journals, coeditor of the schizophrenia section for Current Opinion in Psychiatry and managing editor of the Journal Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie.
Research Interests:
Dr. Fleischhacker’s main research interests relate to schizophrenia and psychopharmacology. They have led to participation in World Health Organization and World Psychiatric Association programs focusing on schizophrenia. He is also a member of the Medical Advisory Board of the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products.
Memberships:
Chairman of the European Group for Research in Schizophrenia, the Schizophrenia Section of the Association of European Psychiatrists and the Section on Stigma and Mental Disorder of the World Psychiatric Association; Vice President and Fellow of the Collegium Internationale Neuro-Psychopharmacologicum; Foreign Corresponding Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology; Member of the Executive Council of the Schizophrenia International Research Society.
Member: European College of Neuropsychopharmacology, Austrian Society of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Austrian Schizophrenia Society, Austrian Association of Biological Psychiatry.

Dr. Svensson, M.D., is Professor of Pharmacology and a member of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. He received his Ph.D. degree from the Medical Faculty, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, under the tuition of Arvid Carlsson and subsequently spent several years in the US, working both in New Haven, Conn., at Yale University Medical School, Depts. of Pharmacology and Psychiatry, and subsequently, in the eighties, at The Salk Institute, La Jolla, CA. He was appointed full professor at the Karolinska Institutet in 1983 and has also served as Chairman of the Department of Pharmacology. Dr Svensson is the author of approximately 290 scientific papers, among them seminal papers in Science and Neuron as well as several patent applications, and has been an invited speaker at innumerous international meetings. He has served as scientific advisor to several academic research institutions and drug companies and has received numerous awards and honors, among them the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology Lilly Neuroscience, Basic Science Award in 2000.  In 1997, he founded Independent Pharmaceutica, a company aimed at providing novel pharmacologic solutions for the treatment of nicotine addiction. Dr. Svensson served as President of the Scandinavian College of Neuro-Psychopharmacology (SCNP) 2001–2005, and as President of the Collegium Internationale Neuro-Psychopharmacologicum (CINP) 2006–2008. His major scientific contributions concern the regulation and function of brain monoamine systems, the mode of action of antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs and various augmentation strategies, as well as the neurobiological basis of nicotine dependence and its treatment.

I received my MBBS from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India in 1988 and moved to complete a residency at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic at the University of Pittsburgh where I developed my first taste for psychiatry and research. After finishing my clinical training it became clear to me that for a clinician to contribute to the emerging sciences of our discipline I would have to obtain specialist scientific training – therefore I enrolled in a joint PhD/Clinical-Research Fellowship at the University of Toronto with a focus on PET imaging, dopamine, cognition and schizophrenia. That training led to my faculty position at the Univeristy of Toronto (1996), where I served from Assistant to Full Professor and Canada Research Chair (2002-2007) and also served in the role as Vice-President and Chief of Research of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (2003-2007). In 2007, I moved to the Institute of Psychiatry, KCL as the Professor for Schizophrenia, Imaging and Therapeutics and the Vice-Dean (Research) and Dean-designate.

My passion and scientific focus has been advancing the treatment of patients with schizophrenia – along with colleagues (Drs. Remington, Zipursky, and Seeman) I have focussed on the study of the role of the brain receptors and neurotransmitters, particularly dopamine and serotonin, and their role in schizophrenia and antipsychotic action. This work has shown that all antipsychotics (typical and atypical) block dopamine D₂ receptors in patients, though to different degrees – and that these differences are clinically very meaningful. Currently we are investigating how the “High” states of these receptors are different from their “Low” states, and whether it makes a difference in treatment. In collaborations with Drs. Fletcher, Fleming and Nobrega focusing on how animal models can be used to derive more innovative treatments for schizophrenia – and this work has pointed to the central importance of ‘sensitization’ as a key to schizophrenia and how animal studies can be informed by human imaging experiments. This work has led to nearly two hundred papers, dozens of presentations worldwide, and has been a training ground for nearly two dozen Phd students and post-doctoral Fellows. I have been fortunate to receive recognition from my peers in terms of the Young Explorer Award of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the AE Bennett Award of the Society for Biological Psychiatry and the Joel Elkes Award of the ACNP.

I have always been, and even more convinced now, that the complexity of psychiatric disorders demands integrative thinking – and it is because of this broad-based and interdisciplinary approach that I joined the CINP and treasure its meetings and interactions. The CINP meetings have consistently provided a very effective meeting place for scientists and clinicians, students and prospective supervisors, academia and industry. Thus, from the day I could afford it (Melbourne in 1996) I have always attended CINP meetings, have proposed and participated in symposia, and have been fortunate to receive your recognition (the Paul Janssen Award).

I think that there are several major challenges and opportunities that confront our field at the moment: The last two decades have seen a tremendous investment by the public sector (either in funding science, or in affording new medications) and significant new findings in the field of genetics and molecular biology. There is a growing expectation that these investments should rapidly translate, and a slight disappointment that they are not. The CINP has an important role here – in using its meetings and publications to highlight the advances that have been made, but, also to put these into perspective, to define factors that are critical in translation and to shape realistic expectations. It is important that we, the professionals who do this work, have a say in shaping the pace and expectations of ‘translation’ based on evidence, rather than on hope or hype. The second major shift is the emergence of neuropsychopharmacology, as treatment and science, in the second and third world. In the last ten years, clinical trials have moved from the ‘west’ to the ‘east.’ In the next ten or twenty – we will see a lot of new science also emerging from the ‘east.’ How to best foster these developments and how to best change the CINP to accommodate the changes of today and expectations of tomorrow remains an active challenge. Finally, while organizations like the CINP have been a forum for bringing the industry and academia together, and have also benefited from active industry support, this is a relationship that is increasingly under scrutiny for all associations. To ensure that we retain our authority with the larger public, it will be critical that we are transparent and forthright in our dealings with the industry, and are constantly changing our practices with the evolving expectations. The CINP has a critical role to play in these areas, and I hope that working together we will be able to positively impact on these issues. .

Anthony Phillips received his PhD in Biopsychology from the University of Western Ontario and was a post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Biology at the California Institute of Technology. He then joined the University of British Columbia, in the Department of Psychology, and was promoted to Full Professor in 1980, serving as Head from 1994-1999. He was appointed Full Professor in the Department of Psychiatry in 2000 and in July 2005 became the Founding Director of the UBC Institute of Mental Health.

Distinguished awards include: Canada Council Killam Senior Research Scholar, 1978-80; E.W.R. Steacie Fellow (NSERC), 1980-82. In 1986 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and was also the recipient of an inaugural UBC Killam Research Prize. The Canadian Psychological Association honored him in 1995 with the Donald O. Hebb Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology as a Science. In 1996 he was awarded the inaugural prize for Innovations in Neuropsychopharmacology by the Canadian College of Neuropsychopharmacology (with H.C. Fibiger).

Dr. Phillips' research interests are broadly based within the field of preclinical neuropsychopharmacology and systems neuroscience. His pioneering research with H.C. Fibiger laid the foundation for the role of dopamine in the neural control of motivation and memory, with clinical implications for understanding biological correlates of addiction. He also has a long-standing interest in applying knowledge about normal brain-behavior function to understanding the neural bases of mental illness and addiction.

Dr. Phillips has played an important role in the evolution of the biotechnology industry in Canada, having been a Founding Director of QLT and serving as Secretary / Treasurer to its Board from 1982-92. He was also Founding Chairman of Stress Gen Biotechnologies, is a Founder and Member of the Board of Allon Therapeutics Inc., and is a Senior Partner in NDI Capital, a venture capital fund specializing in commercialization of discoveries in neuroscience. Recently he served as the inaugural Chair of the Advisory Board for the CIHR Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction and was re-appointed to this position until 2007. He was also a founding member of Neuroscience Canada, a not for profit corporation that provides private support for neuroscience research. Recently he was elected as a Councilor for the Society for Neuroscience.