34th CINP World Congress of Neuropsychopharmacology

Meet The Speakers

Scientific Program
Meet The Speakers
Presenter Resources
CME Accreditation
CINP Awards
Call for Abstracts
Call for Symposia

Important Deadlines

The CINP2023 Scientific Programme Committee is pleased to announce the following congress speakers.

To find out more about each speaker, please click on the pictures below.

Plenary Speakers

Kazuyuki Nakagome

Position: National Center Of Neurology And Psychiatry

Categories: Speakers

Kazuyuki Nakagome, MD, PhD is President of the National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry in Tokyo, Japan.

Dr. Nakagome is a graduate of the University of Tokyo, Japan. Following his residency, he taught neuropsychiatry at several institutions in Tokyo, progressing through the academic ranks to become a full professor in 2005 in the Division of Neuropsychiatry at Department of Brain and Neurosciences, Tottori University, Tottori, Japan, before joining the National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry and progressing to his current positions.

Nakagome’s main interest lies in the relationship between neuro- and social cognition and social functioning outcome along with developing treatment methods for improving social functioning in patients with psychiatric disorders. He has published more than 200 original papers, scientific reviews, chapters and abstracts, and serves as an ad-hoc reviewer for journals such as Journal of Psychiatric Research, Psychiatry Research, Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, Schizophrenia Research and Social Neuroscience.

Nakagome’s expertise is widely sought; he has been invited to present at conferences both in Japan and internationally. In 2007, he first introduced NEAR into Japan thanks to Dr. Medalia, and has been rigorously working on disseminating to various mental health care professionals the significance of becoming aware of cognitive impairment and treating it. Along with his colleagues, he established the Cognitive Enhancement in Psychiatric Disorders (CEPD) conference in Japan in 2014, which was aimed to promote best practice in cognitive rehabilitation in Japan and other areas of Asia.

Kazuyuki Nakagome

National Center Of Neurology And Psychiatry

Oliver Howes

Position: King’s College London

Categories: Speakers

Oliver Howes is Professor of Molecular Psychiatry at King’s and Imperial Colleges, London. His clinical work is as Consultant Psychiatrist at The Maudsley Hospital, where he runs a service for people with psychoses.

His research interests centre on the causes and treatment of affective and psychotic disorders. His recent work has focussed on understanding the role of dopamine and neuroinflammation in the development of psychosis, the effects of antipsychotic drugs, & the causes of cognitive impairments.

His work has been recognised through a number of awards including the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology Joel Elkes Award (2022), Royal College of Psychiatrists Researcher of the Year Award (2017), Schizophrenia International Research Society Rising Star Award (2013). Web of Science named him as one of the most influential researchers in the world over the last decade.

Other career highlights include working as a junior potato scrubber on a farm. He spends his spare time trying to find the world’s best ice-cream.

Paola Dazzan

Position: King’s College London

Categories: Speakers

Paola Dazzan is Professor of Neurobiology of Psychosis and Vice Dean for International Affairs at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London (United Kingdom). She is a practising clinician and Consultant Perinatal Psychiatrist in the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.

After obtaining her medical degree in Italy, she moved to the UK to pursue her research interests. She trained as a psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital, became a Member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (MRCPsych) in 1998 and a Fellow in 2013 (FRCPsych). She completed her PhD at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, in 2006.

She is internationally known for her work on the relationship between magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data and other biological measures such as neurodevelopmental indices, stress and inflammatory markers, and reproductive hormones, and the onset and outcome of psychoses and severe mental health problems. She studies these phenomena in adolescents and in young individuals in the early stages of psychosis, and in pregnant women and their children. More recently, she has also been focusing on the role of nutrition and the arts on mental health, using neuroaesthetics to investigate the perception, production, and neural response to visual arts and their relation to mental health states.

Her work has been extensively published in high impact papers, with more than 290 publications and recognition as 2019, 2020, 2021 Highly Cited Researcher Awardee by Clarivate Analytics. She has received several prestigious International Awards, including the 2014 Academic Researcher of the Year Award from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the 2009 NARSAD Independent Investigator Award and an Honorary Membership of the American Psychiatric Association in recognition of her contribution to psychiatry. In 2017 she received the Guy’s, King’s and St Thomas’s Award for “Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience”, for her work as Lead of Psychiatry teaching in the Medical School.

She has a strong interest in addressing gender inequality and promoting diversity in the academic environment, which she promotes as a member of the Diversity and Inclusion Team of the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, and as elected President of the Schizophrenia International Research Society (SIRS).

She can be followed on Twitter @paola_DZN.

Paul Harrison

Position: University Of Oxford

Categories: Speakers

I am Professor of Psychiatry, Associate Head of Department (Research), and Chair of the University of Oxford Neuroscience Committee. I trained in Oxford and London, and was a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow before being appointed to my present post in 1997. I head a research group investigating molecular, psychopharmacological and therapeutic aspects of mood disorders and schizophrenia – and now the neuropsychiatric aspects of COVID-19. I have published 350 papers and several books. My clinical work centres on mood disorders. I am a Deputy Editor for Biological Psychiatry. I have served on various funding committees, chaired an NHS Research Ethics Committee, and was Treasurer for the Academic Faculty of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. I have supervised 24 PhDs. Awards include the CINP/Paul Janssen Schizophrenia Prize (1998), the British Association for Psychopharmacology Senior Clinical Prize (1999), the A.E. Bennett Award of the Society of Biological Psychiatry (2004), the Joel Elkes Research Award of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (2005), the CINP Lilly Clinical Neuroscience award (2010), and the ECNP Clinical Neuropsychopharmacology award (2012). I was President of the British Association for Psychopharmacology from 2014-2016.

Philippe Courtet

Position: University Of Montpellier

Categories: Speakers

Philippe Courtet, MD, is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Montpellier, and Head of the Department of Emergency & Acute Care Psychiatry at the Academic Hospital, Montpellier, France. He leads the Chair of Excellence in Prevention of Suicide of the Fondation Fondamental, and a research group on “Biomarkers and environment in neuropsychiatric disorders” at the INSERM. His areas of interest involve vulnerability to suicidal behaviour in patients with mood disorders, focusing on brain imaging and social pain. Professor Courtet is now implementing projects using web-based tools for assessing and managing suicidal patients.

Professor Courtet is the new Chairman of the Section of Suicidology and Suicide Prevention of the European Psychiatric Association (EPA), member of the Ethics Committed of the EPA, former President of the French Association of Biological Psychiatry and Neuropsychopharmacology, and a member of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (former co-chair of the Suicide Network).

He has published more than 400 articles in peer-reviewed journals, numerous book chapters and edited three books on suicidal behaviour.

Philippe Courtet

University Of Montpellier

Sergiu Pasca

Position: Stanford University

Categories: Speakers

Sergiu Pasca, MD is the Keneth T. Norris, Jr. Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and the Bonnie Uytengsu and Family Founding Director of Stanford Brain Organogenesis.

He is a CZI Ben Barres Investigator and a Chan Zuckerberg BioHub Investigator.

Prof. Pasca is interested in understanding the rules governing human brain assembly and the mechanisms of disease.

During his clinical training in Romania, he used biochemistry and genetics to explore gene-environment interactions in autism and schizophrenia. He continued his neuroscience training at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt where he investigated the role of gamma oscillations in visual processing. During his postdoctoral studies in Ricardo Dolmetsch’s laboratory at Stanford University, he developed some of the first cellular models with induced pluripotent stem cells to study neuropsychiatric disorders.

His independent laboratory at Stanford introduced instructive signals for reproducibly deriving self-organizing neural region-specific organoids and pioneered a modular platform known as assembloids to study migration and neural circuit formation. Prof. Pasca systematically applied these cellular models to gain insights into human physiology, evolution and disease, and extensively supported researchers around the world in implementing these techniques.

Prof. Pasca was named a Visionary in Medicine and Science by the New York Times, was featured as a physician-scientist by Nature Medicine, and he was a TED 2022 Speaker.

He is the recipient of the 2018 Vilcek Award for Creative Biomedical Promise, the National Institute of Mental Health BRAINS Award (2015), the MQ Award for Transforming Mental Health (2014), the A.E. Bennett Award in Biological Psychiatry (2018), the Folch-Pi Neurochemistry Award (2017), the Günter Blobel Award for Cell Biology (2018), the Daniel E. Efron Award in Neuropsychopharmacology (2018), a Breakthrough in Life Sciences Prize (2020) from Falling Walls, the International Basic Science Schizophrenia Prize (2021), the Joseph Altman Award in Developmental Neuroscience (2021), the Theodore Reich Award (2021), the Judson Daland Prize from the American Philosophical Society (2021) and the 13th IBRO-Kemali Neuroscience Award (2022).

Sophia Frangou

Position: Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Categories: Speakers

Dr. Frangou is Chair in Brain Health at the University of British Columbia and Professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Her work focuses on elucidating the brain correlates of psychopathology and cognition across the lifespan in healthy individuals and persons with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. She is editor-in-chief of European Psychiatry, and Human Brain Mapping. Dr. Frangou has published over 300 articles and has received numerous awards including the 2019 Colvin Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Mood Disorders Research from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation and the 2020 Educator Award and the 2022 George N. Thompson Award, both from the society of Biological Psychiatry.