CINP Council 2026 - 2028

Prof. Atwoli is a Professor in Psychiatry with extensive leadership, teaching, and academic research experience. He is the former Dean of the Moi University School of Medicine, where he excelled at building collaborations and partnerships between the School of Medicine and academic medical centres in Africa, Europe, and the US, transforming it into a regionally leading research and graduate medical school.

Prof Atwoli has a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from Moi University. His residency (Master of Medicine) in Psychiatry was undertaken at the University of Nairobi. Prof Atwoli has a PhD from the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He is a Visiting Scientist at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and an Honorary Associate Professor at the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health, University of Cape Town. He is an international Faculty member at the Global Health Institute, Duke University and an external examiner for multiple universities.

Prof Atwoli leads and participates in mental health research locally and globally. He is a member of the WHO World Mental Health Surveys Consortium, which is the leading collaborative project in psychiatric epidemiology globally. He was also the Global Technical Director for the citiesRISE initiative (www.cities-rise.org), whose goal is to help make five cities mental health friendly (Nairobi, Chennai, Bogota, as well as Seattle and Sacramento). The initiative works with young people in these cities to increase connectedness, improving their coping ability by working to build resilience and hopefulness, and linking those in need to care.

Prof Atwoli has over 50 publications to his credit in academic books and in peerreviewed journals. Additionally, he has supervised to completion 17 Masters Candidates and is currently supervising four PhD and four Masters students at universities in Kenya, the US, and Europe.  

Prof Atwoli is a significant influencer of mental health policy in Kenya and on the continent. To this end, he has served as Vice President of the Kenya Medical Association and holds positions with the African Association of Psychiatrists, the African College of Neuro-psychopharmacology, and the World Psychiatric Association.

Dr. Blumberg is a psychiatrist, the John and Hope Furth Professor of Psychiatric Neuroscience, Professor of Psychiatry, Radiology and Biomedical Imaging and in the Child Center, and Director of the Mood Disorders Research Program at the Yale School of Medicine. Her research is devoted to understanding the causes of mood and related disorders and sucide risk across the lifespan. Her program focuses on multimodal neuroimaging research integrated with translational research approaches to identify brain circuitry differences and generate strategies to target them for early detection, interventions, and prevention. She leads international neuroimaging efforts to study bipolar and other mood disorders and suicide risk from childhood through older adulthood. She has published many seminal papers on mood disorders and received numerous awards, including the International Society of Bipolar Disorders Mogens Schou Award for Research in Bipolar Disorder, the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation Colvin Prize for research in bipolar disorder, and the American Psychiatric Association Blanche F. Ittleson Award for research in children and adolescents. She studied neuroscience as an undergraduate at Harvard University graduating summa cum laude, and completed her medical degree, and psychiatry and specialty training in neuroimaging, at Cornell University Medical College prior to joining Yale’s faculty in 1998.

Professor Stefano Comai, PharmD, PhD is Associate Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Padua, Italy, and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University, Canada. His research bridges basic neuroscience and clinical translation, with a focus on the neurobiological mechanisms underlying psychiatric disorders and the development of innovative therapeutic strategies for precision psychiatry.

Professor Comai's work integrates molecular, biochemical, and behavioral approaches to investigate circadian biology, biomarker discovery, neuropharmacology, and novel treatments for severe mental illness. He has made significant contributions to understanding the role of the melatonergic system in sleep and mood regulation, identifying the distinct functions of MT1 and MT2 receptors and advancing selective receptor ligands as potential therapeutics. His research has also established the kynurenine pathway as a key biomarker of psychiatric disorders and explored the therapeutic potential of cannabinoids and psychedelics, including the mechanisms by which psilocybin and LSD influence neuroplasticity, cognition, and mood regulation.

Professor Comai has published more than 130 peer-reviewed scientific papers and has received numerous competitive research grants and international awards, including the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology New Investigator Award and the NARSAD Young Investigator Grant. He currently serves as President of the International Society for Tryptophan Research (ISTRY) and is an active member of several committees of the International College of Neuropsychopharmacology (CINP). In addition to his research, he serves on the editorial boards of several leading journals and is Associate Editor of Frontiers in Pharmacology and BMC Psychiatry. Through his work, Professor Comai continues to advance translational neuropsychopharmacology by identifying novel biomarkers and therapeutic targets for mood disorders and other severe psychiatric illnesses.

Dr. Kim Q. Do is Professor for Translational Psychiatry at Lausanne University. Trained as neurobiologist at the Polytechnical Federal School (ETHZ) and Brain Research Institute in Zurich, she is interested in bridging basic neuroscience with problems of clinical psychiatry.  

She set up a translational research program aimed at a better understanding of the causes and mechanisms leading to schizophrenia phenotypes in order to develop markers for early diagnosis, new drug targets as well as preventive and therapeutic measures.

Dr. Do’s pioneering and evolving focus on redox dysregulation and oxidative stress in psychosis has a growing influence on schizophrenia research. Her multiple achievements have been acknowledged by membership at the Swiss Academy of Medical Science and multiple awards including the NARSAD Independent Investigator Award from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (USA) in 2006, the NARSAD Distinguished Investigator Award in 2010 and, in 2018, the SIRS Outstanding Basic Science Award from the Schizophrenia International Research Society as the Elsevier Senior Schizophrenia Research Award from the American publisher Elsevier.

In addition to her research activities, Dr. Do also works on professional education and public outreach towards better care and cure of major psychiatric disorders, among others as co-founder of the Alamaya Foundation (www.alamaya.net) She highly values diversity within her laboratory environment, which includes researchers coming from different disciplines, countries and cultures. She serves in various committees including the Diversity Task Force of SIRS, the Program Committee of SOBP, the Honorific Award committee of ACNP, and is Chair of the Award Committee of SIRS - in which ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ have been introduced as critical criteria for nomination and selection. She is qualified in collaborating with people with lived experience within her research of biomarkers in the early phase of psychosis and two clinical studies with NAC. She is committed to promoting and mentoring early career researchers both in basic and clinical research. She trained 15 postdocs (11 female / 4 male), 11 clinician scientists (4 female / 7 male), and 39 Phd and Master students (21 female / 18 male).

Dr. Do authored over 350 publications, and serves on the Editorial Boards of Translational Psychiatry, International Journal for Neuropsychopharmacology, NPJ Schizophrenia, Molecular Psychiatry, Journal of Psychiatry and Mental Health, and Discover Mental Health.

Professor Cheng-Ta Li, MD, PhD is Chief of the Precision Depression Intervention Center (PreDIC) at the Department of Psychiatry, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taiwan, and Professor of Psychiatry and Brain Science at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University. Following his medical and psychiatric training in Taiwan, he completed advanced research training in molecular and functional neuroimaging at the National Institute of Mental Health, USA.

Professor Li is an internationally recognized expert in precision psychiatry and treatment-resistant depression (TRD). His research integrates randomized sham-controlled clinical trials, multimodal neuroimaging, neurophysiology, translational animal models, and artificial intelligence to advance the understanding and treatment of mood disorders. His pioneering work has helped redefine treatment-resistant depression as a distinct neurobiological phenotype and has provided important insights into the mechanisms of innovative therapies, including intermittent theta-burst stimulation (iTBS) and low-dose ketamine. More recently, his research has focused on developing machine-learning approaches to predict treatment response, refractoriness, and suicide risk, leading to several patented clinical innovations.

Professor Li has published more than 250 SCI-indexed papers in leading journals, including Brain, Biological Psychiatry, JAMA Psychiatry, Psychological Medicine, and Molecular Psychiatry. He has received numerous national and international awards, including the Clinical Science Award from the Asian College of Neuropsychopharmacology, and has been ranked among the top 1% of global experts in treatment-resistant depression by ExpertScape. Beyond his research, he plays a leading role in advancing clinical practice and professional education in Taiwan, serving as convenor of national committees on non-invasive brain stimulation and as a leader of the Taiwanese Society of Brain Stimulation, helping to shape national guidelines and training in neuromodulation and rapid-acting antidepressant therapies.

Professor Julio Licinio, MD, PhD, MBA, MS, FRANZCP, FAAHMS is SUNY Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, Medicine, Pharmacology, and Neuroscience & Physiology at the State University of New York (SUNY), USA. An internationally renowned psychiatrist, physician-scientist, and academic leader, he has held senior leadership positions at leading institutions including SUNY Upstate Medical University, Flinders University, the Australian National University, the University of Miami, UCLA, the National Institute of Mental Health, and Yale University.

Professor Licinio's research spans psychiatry, precision medicine, genomics, pharmacogenomics, neuroimmunology, and the microbiome, with a particular focus on major depression, mood disorders, obesity, and metabolic disease. Throughout his distinguished career, he has made seminal contributions to the understanding of the biological mechanisms underlying psychiatric and metabolic disorders, including influential work on leptin biology, neuroendocrinology, inflammation, and human genetics. He has also contributed to landmark international initiatives such as the HapMap Project, which transformed the study of human genetic variation.

Professor Licinio has published more than 540 scientific papers, with an H-index of 96 and over 48,000 citations, making him one of the most highly cited researchers in biological psychiatry. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of both Molecular Psychiatry and Translational Psychiatry, two of the world's leading journals in psychiatric research, and is the Publisher and CEO of Genomic Press. His research has been supported by more than US$31 million in competitive funding from major national and international agencies, including the US National Institutes of Health, the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, the Wellcome Trust, and other prestigious organizations. His work continues to advance precision psychiatry through the integration of neuroscience, genomics, and translational medicine.

Dr. Pedro Antônio Schmidt do Prado Lima graduated in Medicine in 1983 at the current Federal University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre (UFCSPA), and completed his training in psychiatry at the Clinique des Maladies Mentales et de l'Encéphale, at the Center Hospitalier Universitaire Sainte- Anne, from the Université Paris Descartes, between 1984 and 1987.

He received the title of psychiatrist from the Brazilian Psychiatric Association, completed a master's degree in Pharmacology at UFCSPA and a doctorate in Biochemistry at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. He specialized in treatment-resistant patients and carried out research mainly in psychopharmacology, but also in genetics and cell therapy.

He was one of the creators and organizer for fifteen years of the World Congress on Brain, Behavior and Emotions.

Dr. Atsumi Nitta graduated with a BS degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Gifu Pharmaceutical University in 1990 and obtained an M.Sc. in Pharmacy from the same institute in 1992. She received Ph.D. in Medicine from Nagoya University in 1995. She began research in the field of neuropsychopharmacology. As an Assistant Professor in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Gifu Pharmaceutical University (1995–2002), She gained experience in various molecule biology techniques and established enzyme immunoaasay systems to measure neurotrophic factors levels in mice or human brains and in cultured medium. She found that Leu-Ile is effective for animal models of spinal cord injury, Parkinson’s disease, and depression via neurotrophic factors inductions. In 2002, she was promoted to be the Associated Professor and Vice Director of the Department of Neuropsychopharmacology and Hospital Pharmacy, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine. At Nagoya University, she joined new projects of drug addiction and schizophrenia as well as cognitive disorders both in the basic and clinical fields. She isolated new molecules associated with drug addiction and mental diseases. In 2009, She was promoted to be a full-Professor at the Department of Pharmaceutical Therapy & Neuropharmacology, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Graduate School of Medicine and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Toyama. She is an appointed member for Committee of Research Center for Science System at Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and contribute to the education in School of Pharmacy to be high-level clinical pharmacists in Japan.　She served the Councilor of CINP (2018-2021, 2022-), Japan Society of Pharmacology (2005-), and the director of Japan Society of Neuropsychopharmacology (2016-2019, 2021-2024) and Japan Neurochemistry (2015-2016). In these laboratories, she continued studies on addiction, schizophrenia, depression, dementia, and neurodevelopmental disorders at the molecular, genetic, animal-behavioral, and clinical levels. She has published more than 150 articles covering these topics in scientific journals, including Int. J. Neuropsychopharmacol., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., Mol. Psychiatry, and Neuropsychopharmacology. She was awarded the Tomoji Yanagida Award, Japanese  Medical Society of Alcohol and Addiction Studies in December 2021.

I graduated from Erciyes University where I also completed my child psychiatry training.

I am currently an academic trainee in child and adolescent psychiatry in South London, working on neurodevelopmental disorders and transdiagnostic markers of poorprognosis such as emotion dysregulation. I work with the Digital Lab, mainly focus on study ing the use of Natural Language Processing tools and actigraphic devices in neurodevelopmental research.

I'm also interested in medical education and have been involved in several initiatives and roles such as the president of the European Federation of Psychiatric Trainees working to support trainees throughout Europe and beyond. I am the founding editorin-chief of the International Journal of Psychiatric Trainee, co-published by the CINP.

I am the current chair of the CINP’s Early Careers Committee, which I had the pleasure to found with the support of Prof Joseph Zohar and the CINP executives. As the main initiative of this Committee, we have organised 2 successful rounds of the CINP Research Fellowship which brought together a network of multidisciplinary neuropsychopharmacology researchers in the Montreal and Tokyo Congresses as well as providing them with online sessions from renowned experts in the field.

Tianmei Si is Professor of Psychiatry, Director of the Department of Clinical Psychopharmacology, and the deputy of Peking University Institute of Mental Health (PUIMH), Beijing, China. 

Professor Si received her medical degree from Shanxi Medical University (SMU), Shanxi, China, and went on to obtain her MD and PhD at PUIMH. Following a psychiatry residency at the First Hospital of SMU, Professor Si spent 2 years at PUIMH as a Consultant Psychiatrist. She undertook a research fellowship at the Research Institute of Biological Psychiatry, St Hans Hospital, Roskilde, Denmark, prior to her current roles at PUIMH. Professor Si is an Executive Committee member of the Chinese Society of Psychiatry and the Chinese Medical Association. In addition, she is Chair of the Chinese Schizophrenia Collaborative Group. She is the present president of Asian Schizophrenia Research Institute and the elected president of Asian Collegium of Neuropsychopharmacology.

Professor Si coordinates active basic and clinical research programs centered on the clinical psychopharmacology. She is particularly interested in the hypoglutamatergic function and neurodevelopment process of schizophrenia, as well as the neuroprotective effects of antipsychotics. Currently, Professor Si and her research group are looking into the design of psychopharmacological clinical trials and the development of the Chinese Psychopharmacology Algorithm Project. As the PI, she got more than ten funds support from National Natural Science Foundation of China, Beijing Capital Foundation of Medicine Research and Development, the Ministry of Science and Technology, “12th Five-year-plan” of National Key Technologies R&D Program of China, and the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China, Ministry of Education. With the financial support of these grants, professor Si has found more interesting scientific results in the area of neuropharmacology and published more than 230 scientific papers in both local and international peer-reviewed journals. 

Professor Si has been the CINP member since 2004, after the regional CINP congress in Beijing. She insisted on working as the secretary of scientific committee for this congress, getting rid of the adverse effects of SARS epidemic in Beijing. Since then, she was active to set up a bridge between CINP and Chinese Psychiatry Society, jointly organizing a series neuropsychopharmacology training course sponsored by CINP. The sequential training benefited a lot of Chinese Psychiatrists. She was appointed as the CINP Chinese Ambassador to promote the biennial CINP Congress and CINP, these activities made CINP more attractive among Chinese psychiatrists.

Professor Si was elected as the Councilor of CINP this year, she would like to work with international colleagues to promote the development of CINP.