CINP Council 2024 - 2026

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.

Professor Ya Mei Bai, M.D., Ph.D. is the Chief of Department of Psychiatry, Taipei Veterans General Hospital and National Yang-Ming Chao-Tung University, Taiwan. and other present academic positions include full Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Institute of Brain Science at the National Yang-Ming Chao-Tung University; Deputy Director, Faculty of Medicine, National Yang-Ming Chao-Tung University. Prof Bai is the President of Taiwanese Society of Biological Psychiatry and Neuropsychopharmacology (TSBPN), responsible for CINP 2022 congress meeting in Taipei Taiwan. Prof Bai is also the Council of Asian College of Neuropsychopharmacology (AsCNP). Prof Bai completed her psychitrist residence training at Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taiwan; and completed her research fellowship from the Harvard Medical School, Boston Mclean Hospital in 2001. Her main clinical and academic interests include neuroinflammatory study including epidemiological, cognitive and neuroimaging research in schizophrenia, depressive disorder and bipolar disorder, psychopharmacological treatment and safety studies by clinical cohort study, and psycho-epidemiology big data study. Prof Bai has published more than 330 papers in the international journals, and listed as the World’s Top 2% Scientists 2021 of the most-cited scientists in various disciplines by Standford University, and in the top 1% of 2021 scholars writing about Mood Disorders over the past 10 years by Expertscape's PubMed-based algorithms. Prof. Bai has been the speaker and chairperson of many international psychiatirc meetings, the principal investigator of many international studies, and received many honors and awards including Dr. Paul Janssen Research Award of Schizophrenia, Research Award of bipolar disorder, GSK depression and anxiety research Award, Travel Award of European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) and Japan biological and neuropsychopharmacological association. Prof Bai is also the devoted in medical education, and has been voted by the medical students as the Distinguished Teacher of National Yang-Ming Chao-Tung University for more than 15 years.

Lucie Bartova, born in Ostrava, Czech Republic, obtained her medical degree (MD) in 2012 at the Medical University of Vienna (MUV) in Austria. As a diploma and subsequently doctoral student at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the MUV, she investigated neuroimaging correlates of acute and remitted major depressive disorder (MDD) under supervision of Assoc.Prof. Priv.Doz. Dr. Lukas Pezawas (ORCID: 0000-0002-1329-6352) and received her scientific degree (PhD) in 2019. Simultaneously, she completed her psychotherapeutic training (psychoanalytic psychotherapy) and residency in psychiatry, whereby she has been involved in clinical, psychopharmacotherapeutic and neuroimaging studies focusing predominantly on MDD and schizophrenia. Under supervision of em.O.Univ.Prof.Dr.h.c.mult. Dr.med. Siegfried Kasper (ORCID: 0000-0001-8278-191X), the former head of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the MUV, enabling her educational opportunities which have constantly widened her scientific, clinical and personal knowledge horizon, Lucie Bartova has increasingly focused on challenging psychiatric conditions such as treatment resistant depression (TRD). She has presented her results at national and international conferences, published in known psychiatric journals, and received performance scholarship of the MUV as well as national and international travel- and research awards. She served as a member of the scientific programme & local organising committee for the CINP Thematic Meeting 2017 in Prague, Czech Republic on the topic of TRD. Since 2021 she has served as a member of the scientific committee of the 33rd CINP World Congress of Neuropsychopharmacology. In 2020 she became a member of the editorial board of the psychiatric journals „International Journal of Psychiatry in Clinical Practice“, „Frontiers in Psychiatry“, „Journal für Neurologie, Neurochirurgie und Psychiatrie“, and “JATROS Neurologie & Psychiatrie”. In 2021 she joined the editorial board of “Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics”. From April 2021 until end of March 2022 she served as a visiting scientist (focus: TRD) at the Psychiatry Institute at the Department of Biomedical and NeuroMotor Sciences of the University of Bologna in Italy under supervision of Prof. Alessandro Serretti (ORCID: 0000-0003-4363-3759). In 2022, she competed her Habilitation in Psychiatry ("License to teach psychiatry“) at the MUV in Austria (academic degree: PD).

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.

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.

I am of multiracial origin, born and raised in Brazil, a developing country in the southern hemisphere, with Portuguese as my native and primary language. I have decades of experience in academic psychiatry and psychiatric research, from trainee to department chair, institute director and medical school dean, not only having done substantial amounts of basic, translational, and clinical research with my own hands, but also providing supervision and oversight to large research operations. At the CINP, I am committed to using my skills to enhance research, mentoring, and career development structures so that we can develop talent to advance neuropsychopharmacology globally.

Finally, as Editor-in-Chief, I have founded and led four Springer Nature journals: Molecular Psychiatry (1996-present, Impact Factor [IF]: 15.992), The Pharmacogenomics Journal (2001-2020), Translational Psychiatry (2011-present, IF: 6.222), and Discover Mental Health (2021). I raised the rankings of Molecular Psychiatry from non-existence to number 1 worldwide in 13 years. In the last seven years, I edited and published 44 articles by nine Nobel Prize winners. I am delighted to bring this experience to the CINP.

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.

Professor Suresh Sundram is the Chair and Head, Department of Psychiatry, School of Clinical Sciences, Monash University and Director of Research, Mental Health Program, Monash Health.

He has been investigating the molecular pathology of schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders using pharmacological, neurochemical and neuropathological approaches. These inter-related methods have been applied to parse components of the disorder such as treatment resistance and suicide to better understand their neurobiological substrates. He undertook his doctoral and post-doctoral studies at the Mental Health Research Institute, University of Melbourne, before establishing his laboratory there and subsequently at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health and concurrently establishing a clinical research laboratory undertaking clinical trial and biomarker research in psychotic disorders. He then transferred to, and integrated his research program at Monash University and Monash Medical Centre.

Together, this has permitted rapid and seamless translational research between molecular and clinical approaches. The work has resulted in more than 200 published scientific articles, books, book chapters and conference abstracts.

In addition, professor Sundram is an intecrnationally recognised expert on the mental health of asylum seekers and refugees. He has presented as plenary and invited speaker at international and national conferences, served as deputy editor for the Asian Journal of Psychiatry and is an advisor to the UN, national and state governments.