Executive Committee 2021 - 2022

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 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. Kazutaka Ikeda is the Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science. He graduated from the Faculty of Technology at The University of Tokyo (B.Eng.) in 1989 and obtained his M.Med degree from Osaka University in 1991 and Ph.D. degree from Niigata University in 1995. While in Prof. Mishina’s laboratory at Niigata University, he cloned cDNA for the NMDA GluN2D receptor channel subunit and produced mice that lacked this subunit. He also produced mice that lacked the glutamate GluD2 receptor channel subunit and revealed a pivotal role for this subunit in motor control. Furthermore, he started studies on the opioid system and G protein-activated inwardly rectifying potassium (GIRK) channels.

As a research fellow at RIKEN Brain Science Institute (1995-2000), he continued opioid and GIRK research and started studies on the dopamine system. He was appointed Senior Research Fellow (2000), Acting Chair (2002), and Chair (2003) in the Department of Molecular Psychiatry, Tokyo Institute Psychiatry, and Leader of the Addiction Substance Project (2011) and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science (2015). While at these institutions, he continued studies on addiction, schizophrenia, analgesia, and neurodevelopmental disorders at the molecular, genetic, animal-behavioral, and clinical levels. He has approximately 300 publications on these topics in prominent scientific journals. He was awarded the Distinguished International Scientist Collaboration Program Award from the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse in 2004, among several other awards. He is serving as an Academic Editor of PLoS One, a Field Editor of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, and an Editorial Board Member of several other journals. He has been a Fellow of CINP since 2010 and served as CINP Councillor (2016-2018).

The Japanese Society of Neuropsychopharmacology (JSNP) has over 1300 members and is under the umbrella of CINP. He is currently President of JSNP (2016-2018). He is President-elect (2017-2018) of the Asian College of Neuropsychopharmacology (AsCNP), which has over 3000 members and is also under the umbrella of CINP. He is a member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacolgy (since 2014). He is also a member of the Science Council of Japan (2014-2020).

Dan Rujescu is Chair of the Clinical Division of General Psychiatry of the Medical University of Vienna. He received his medical degree from the Universities Heidelberg and Essen. From 1993-1995 he worked as a physician at the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Mainz. Afterwards, he moved to the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Munich where he became Head of the Division of Molecular and Clinical Neurobiology, a senior physician, a medical specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy, a full Professor for Psychiatry, Head of the Alzheimer Memorial Center, as well as Deputy Head of the Department. From 2012 till Spring 2021 he was Chair of the Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics of the University of Halle, Germany. He refers to an extensive list of publications comprising more than 750 publications with a Hirschfaktor of 90 (e.g. Nature; Nature Genetics). He has top-class national and in particular international collaborations and to date has been able to raise more than € 9.2 million in thirdparty funds, including part of eight EU-funded projects, three genome-wide genotyping initiatives of the Wellcome Trust (WTCCC2/3), one DFG priority programme, one project of the Bavarian Research Foundation, two R01 projects of the National Institutes of Mental Health (USA), one project of the National Genome Research Network, and one project of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Dan Rujescu is member of several national and international scientific societies. Within the World Society of Biological Psychiatry (WFSBP) he is head of the “Genetics” task force and Chief-Editor of the “World Journal of Biological Psychiatry”. Furthermore, he is PI e.g. of the EU:FP7: project “Optimising current therapeutic approaches to schizophrenia. Optimization of Treatment and Management of Schizophrenia (OPTIMISE)” and the EU:FP7 consortium “Pharmacogenomic biomarkers as clinical decision making tools for clozapine treatment of schizophrenia (CRESTAR)”.

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.