Immuno-Psychiatry Facts and Prospects

Michael Berk
 is an NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow at Deakin University, where he heads the IMPACT institute. He is listed by Thompson Reuters as amongst the world’s most influential scientific minds (2015-2020) and was awarded the Brain & Behaviour (NARSAD) Colvin Award for Mood Disorders in 2015, the Victoria Prize for life sciences in 2019 and the International Society for Bipolar Disorders Bob Post award for mentorship in 2020. He is past president of the International Society for Bipolar Disorders and the Australasian Society for Bipolar and Depressive Disorders. His major interests are in the discovery and implementation of novel therapies.

Marion Leboyer
 M.D., Ph.D. is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Paris Est Créteil (UPEC) in France. She is Head of the University-affiliated Department of Psychiatry and Addiction, DMU IMPACT (Hôpitaux Universitaires Mondor, Assistance-Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris) and runs the “TranslationalNeuro Psychiatry” laboratory which is part of the Mondor Institute for Biomedical Research (Inserm U955). Since 2007, she has been the Executive Director of the non profit foundation, “Fondation FondaMental”, created by the French Ministry of Research. She is President of the ECNP Immuno-psychiatry TWG. She is listed as a highly cited researcher in 2020.

Iris Sommer
 MD, PhD is a Professor of Psychiatry working at the Biomedical and Psychiatry Departments of the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) in the Netherlands. She is an expert in psychotic disorders and leads several trials aiming to improve treatment in this patient group. She is an associate editor of Lancet Psychiatry and Psychological Medicine, and a board member of ECNP and SIRS. She is a founding member of the International Consortium of Hallucination Research and initiated the Gordon Research Conference cycle on cognitive dysfunction in brain disorders together with Prof. Linda Lam from the ChineseUniversity of Hong Kong. In 2021, she was elected member of the Royal Holland Academy of Science.