Executive Committee 2021 - 2022

Dr Pierre Blier is a Full Professor for the Departments of Psychiatry and Cellular & Molecular Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and the Director of the Mood Disorders Research Unit at The Royal’s Institute of Mental Health Research.

Dr Blier is on the editorial boards of several journals and is the co-editor in chief for the Journal of Psychopharmacolgy and field editor for translational medicine for the official journal of International College of Neuropsychopharmacology (CINP).  In addition to his extensive list of publications and lectures presented worldwide, Dr. Blier has contributed to several treatment guidelines for psychiatric disorders. Dr Blier has a basic research laboratory investigating how psychotropic medications work in the brain, he carries out investigator-initiated clinical studies, and treats patients with mood and anxiety disorders on a daily basis.

Dr Blier received several awards for outstanding contributions to psychopharmacology including the Canada Research Chair in Psychopharmacology from the Government of Canada and is now a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Life Sciences). He also serves on several committees, including the presidency elect of the CINP.

Dr. Siegfried Kasper is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and former Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria. Born in Salzburg, Austria, he was educated at the medical schools of the University of Innsbruck, Austria and the Universities of Freiburg and Heidelberg, Germany. Dr. Kasper gained clinical and research experience in psychiatry at the Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim, Germany, the Psychiatric Department of the University of Heidelberg, Germany, the Clinical Psychobiology Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland/USA, and the Psychiatric Department of the University of Bonn, Germany; in neurology at the Neurological Department of the University of Heidelberg in Mannheim; and psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic training at the Ausbildungsinstitut für Psychotherapie und Psychoanalyse in Heidelberg/Mannheim, Germany.

Dr. Kasper has published more than 600 in PubMed listed publications (Google: Citation Index: 46.522; Hirsch-Index: 108, i10-index: 665) and more than 250 books or book chapters, in various areas of psychiatry. He concentrates on the biological bases of mental disorders and their possible treatment approaches. Furthermore, he has conducted studies in psychopathological as well as clinical areas. Dr Kasper is a frequent national and international speaker and continues to be actively involved in research programmes studying depression, anxiety, psychosis, and dementia.

Dr. Kasper serves/served on the executive committees and advisory boards of several national and international societies, such as the Austrian Association of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatic (ÖGPP), the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) and the European Psychiatric Association (EPA). From 2005 to 2009 Dr. Kasper was President of the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry (WFSBP) and has been appointed as Honorary President of the WFSBP in 2013. He has been elected to the Executive Committee of the International College of Neuropsychopharmacology (CINP) for the period of 2012 to 2018 and is now President of this society. Moreover, Dr. Kasper was Chair of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) Section of Pharmacopsychiatry from 2012-2019. He is Founding President of the Austrian Society of Neuropsychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry (ÖGPB) and of the Austrian Society of Drug Safety in Psychiatry (ÖAMSP). Furthermore, he is a Honorary Member of the Czech Society of Neuropsychopharmacology, the Romanian Society of Neuropsychopharmacology, the Hungarian Psychiatric Association and a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, UK, as well as of the Scandinavian College of Neuro-Psychopharmacology (SCNP) and of the Ukrainian Association of Psychiatry. He is a member of the Academia Europaea as well as the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (EASA). Furthermore, he has been appointed as Honorary/Visiting Professor at the following universities: University of Hong Kong, China, in 2004; Universidad Andrés Bello, Santiago de Chile, Chile, 2014; Aino University in Osaka, Japan, 2015; Kolkata Institute of Psychiatry, Department of Health & Family Welfare, India in 2016; University of Hiroshima, Japan, in 2017 and Belgrade University School of Medicine, Serbia, in 2017.

Dr. Kasper serves on the editorial boards of numerous learned journals, including The Lancet Psychiatry, CNS Spectrums, Journal of Affective Disorders, Pharmacopsychiatry, European Archives of Psychiatry and Neuroscience. He is Chief-Editor of the International Journal of Psychiatry in Clinical Practice and was Chief-Editor of the World Journal of Biological Psychiatry and Field Editor of the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology.

As a result of his research expertise he is the recipient of numerous national and international scientific and public awards and prizes and has been acknowledged with the Grand Decoration of Honor in Silver for Services to the Republic of Austria, the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art, First Class, the Gold Medal for Meritorious Service to the Province of Vienna and received in 2019 the City of Vienna Award for Medical Science.

Prof. Zohar is the Director of the National Post-Trauma Center, Research Foundation by the Sheba Medical Center, Israel. He is an emeritus professor of Psychiatry at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, at Tel Aviv University.  

Prof. Zohar is the past-President of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP). He is also chair of the Israeli consortium on PTSD, chair of the International College of Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum Disorders (ICOCS), a board member for the International Master in Affective Neuroscience, and a visiting Professor at the University of Maastricht in The Netherland.

Prof. Zohar had authored over 350 papers, had written or took part in the writing of 16 books focusing on Resistant Depression, OCD, PTSD and Psychotropic. He was the founding associate editor of CNS Spectrums and of the World Journal of Biological Psychiatry. Prof. Zohar was advisor to DSM – IV and 5 in OCD and co-chair of the Workgroup preparing the research agenda on OCD for DSM-5. He has pioneered and is currently the Chair of an international collaboration (joint venture of ECNP, ACNP, CINP, AsCNP and IUPAR) on developing new nomenclature for CNS drugs; NbN - Neuroscience based Nomenclature. He is also the chair of the Expert Platform on Mental Health focus on Depression

Prof. Zohar had been honored with several awards, including the Fogarty International Research Fellowship Award (1984), the A.E. Bennet Award for Clinical Research (1986 and 2002), ECNP Neuroscience Award for Clinical Research (1998), and the WFSBP Award for Excellence in Education (2001).

Prof. Zohar has recently (2012) received funding (RO1) from National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to explore secondary prevention of PTSD and from NATO (2018) to develop a guideline on the treatment in the “Golden Hours” after a terror attack. He is also the Co-Chair of EU grant on Problematic Use of Internet PUI (2017).

Dr. Shih-Ku Lin graduated from Kaohsiung Medical University in 1981, and received his psychiatric residency training in Taipei City Psychiatric Center (TCPC). After completing the training and acquired Board Certified Psychiatrist qualification, he had his fellowship of child psychiatry at Kansas University Medical Center in 1988. In 1993, he was appointed as the Chief of Department of Addiction Science at TCPC and has led this department for 11 years. Currently he is the Chair of Department of Psychiatry, Taipei City Hospital and Psychiatric Center and adjunct associate professor, College of Medicine, Taipei Medical University.

Since his residency, he followed Professor Wen-Ho Chang in academic researches and participated in the founding of Taiwanese Society of Biological Psychiatry and Neuropsychopharmacology (TSBPN) and served the first secretary of this Society in 2002. Dr. Lin also founded Taiwanese Society of Addiction and served the first President in 2008. Currently he is the President of TSBPN (2016-2019).

Dr Lin’s research interest includes psychopharmacology, focusing on ethnic differences in pharmacokinetics and new drug clinical trials. Currently he is in charge of Research on Asian Psychotropic Prescription Pattern (REAP BD and MS) which will involve 15 Asian Countries and Region, to survey the medications used in bipolar disorder, and the disorders using mood stabilizers other than bipolar disorder. In addictive disorders, his groups focus on methamphetamine-induced psychosis and ketamine use disorder, covers from genetic study to clinical interventions. He also has more than twenty years’ experiences in clinical trials, mostly for phase II or III global and regional new psychotropic drug development. Dr Lin has published more than one hundred and twenty peer reviewed papers and has reviewed articles for many international journals.

Maria A. Oquendo, MD, PhD is Ruth Meltzer Professor and Chairman of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania.  She has used Positron Emission Tomography to map brain abnormalities in mood disorders and suicidal behavior. Her expertise ranges from psychopharmacology to Global Mental Health with over 450 publications. 

Professor Oquendo is President of American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP), American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, past President of the American Psychiatric Association, CINP’s Vice-President Elect, and a National Academy of Medicine member, one of the highest honors in medicine.

A recipient of multiple international awards, most recently, she received the Dolores Shockley Award (ACNP, 2018).

Dr. Gabriella Gobbi is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, McGill University.

She leads a laboratory of basic science (Neurobiological Psychiatry Unit) and works as a Staff Psychiatrist at the Mood Disorder Clinic of the McGill University Health Center.

Her research approach spans from bench to bedside, bridging the gaps between fundamental and clinical research. Dr. Gobbi received her MD (1991) and her specialty in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (1995) from the Catholic University of Rome (Italy). She also earned a PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Cagliari, Italy) and finalized a post-doc at McGill University (Montreal, Canada) in 1998.
Dr Gobbi’s lab is interested in understanding the pathophysiology of major depression and sleep related disorders and in the discovery of new treatments and cures for them.

In particular, her laboratory is studying the short- and long-term effects of cannabis use in mood and anxiety, and the potential beneficial effects of the drugs acting on the endocannabinoid system (endogenous cannabis) in the cure of mental diseases. Her lab is also studying the effect of melatonin in mood, anxiety and sleep regulation in an effort to understand how novel selective ligands for melatonin receptors (called MT1 and MT2 receptors) can be used to treat seasonal depression, major depression, sleep disorders, as well as pain.

Dr. Gobbi is author of more than 90 highly cited manuscripts in high impact journals, 20 book chapters, one book and holds two international patents in psychopharmacology.

She has received several fellowships for more than $10M as a principal investigator. She has won many prizes including the Canadian College of Neuropsychopharmacology (CCNP) Young investigator Award in 2012, the Venezia Prize in 2015 and the Sam Lal prize from the Boeckh Foundation in 2017. She has served as reviewer/editor for many journals, international grant agencies in Europe and the USA and has been invited to speak at conferences around the world.