CINP 20/21 Awardees

CINP 2020/21 Awardees

It is with great pleasure that the CINP 2021 Virtual World Congress announces the following recipients for these internationally recognized awards. To find out more about each awardee, please click on his/her name.

Pioneer Awards

About the Award
The Award is given at each Congress to three individuals to honour those who have made major contributions to the field of neuropsychopharmacology. The candidate should have made major contributions and must be internationally recognized as significant to the growth of the field. The CINP Pioneer Awardees will be recognized at a ceremony during the 33rd CINP World Congress taking place in Montreal, Canada, from 1-4 November 2021. They will receive free attendance to the congress and travel support.

CINP 2021 Virtual World Congress, CINP 2021, Neuropsychopharmacology — Austria
Oleh Hornykiewicz

Austria

Oleh Hornykiewicz

Oleh Hornykiewicz was born on November 17, 1926 in Sychiw near Lviv/Lemberg in Eastern Galicia today belonging to the western part of Ukraine and died on May 26, 2020. He received his M.D. degree from the University of Vienna and joined the faculty of his alma mater the same year and has worked there ever since. He also served for twenty years as chairman of the Institute of Biochemical Pharmacology. In 1967, he began a long association with the University of Toronto in Canada and, in 1992, he was named professor emeritus at that institution. One of his seminal accomplishments was the discovery that Parkinson’s disease was due to dopamine deficiency in the brain. He also played a key role in the development of L-dopa as a therapy for the disorder.

After the integration of the Institute of Biochemical Pharmacology into the Brain Research Institute of the University of Vienna in 1999, he spent ,up to three years ago, all days at his office at the Brain Research Institute, now Center for Brain Research of the Medical University of Vienna. He vividly and highly scholarly discussed his ideas on rather different topics in neuroscience. His favorite topic however still remained basal ganglia and Parkinson's disease.

United States

Judith Rapoport

Dr. Judith Rapoport has concentrated her research on several aspects of child psychiatry, including diagnosis, childhood hyperactivity, pediatric psychopharmacology, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Her current research on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder has focused on normal and abnormal brain development.

Dr. Rapoport was named chief of the Child Psychiatry Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health in 1984. In addition to her research at NIH, she is also a professor of psychiatry at George Washington University School of Medicine, and a clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at Georgetown University Medical School. Dr. Rapoport has authored and coauthored three professional books and over two hundred research journal articles. She also serves on the editorial board of Advances in Clinical Child Psychiatry, American Journal of Psychiatry, and Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, among others.

Among her many honors are several awards including the G. Burroughs Mider Lecture, NIH, in 1993, the American Psychiatric Association Award for Research in 1992, the Presidential Meritorious Executive Rank Award in 1991, and the NIMH Director’s Award in 1990.

Sweden

Torgny Svenson

Torgny Svenson, Professor emeritus of Pharmacology at Karolinska Institutet, succumbed to Covid-19 on Friday June 12, 2020, at the age of 75. He is grieved by his wife Louise and their children Martin, Jenny and Michael, and missed by many friends and colleagues in Sweden and around the world. During Torgny´s period as a very successful president of the Scandinavian College of Neuropsychopharmacology (SCNP) from 2001 to 2005, the annual meetings of this society attracted more attendants than ever before. Illustrating his standing in the international psychopharmacological sphere, he became President of the CINP in 2006, and held this position when the society celebrated its 50 years anniversary.

Torgny was a person whom you did not easily forget, if you had had the privilege to meet him on a person-to-person basis. He was a great scientist always ready to discuss experiments and his most novel ideas in detail, and he inspired and guided a large number of PhD students through their journey to a successful defense.

Sumitomo/Sunovion Brain Health Basic Research Award

Sweden

Tibor Harkany

Dr. Tibor Harkany is Professor at the Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden and Chair of the Department of Molecular Neurosciences, Center for Brain Research, Medical University of Vienna, Austria. He is one of the world’s leading neurobiologists to study the developmental consequences of maternal drug abuse during pregnancy, with a keen focus on cannabis and psychostimulants. His work on the molecular basis of how Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) impacts brain development and imposes life-long modifications to the cortical circuitry is particularly honored by this award.

Dr. Harkany’s early contributions addressed the developmental dynamics of endocannabinoid signalling; particularly showing that endocannabinoid action on cannabinoid receptors affects neuronal migration and differentiation in the cerebral cortex (PNAS, 2005/2008; J Neurosi 2010; Nat Commun 2014). He has demonstrated that endocannabinoids act as repulsive cues for directional axonal growth, thus being important to shape neuronal connectivity in the developing brain (Science, 2007). He then applied this knowledge to identify the nascent axon as the compartment foremost affected by THC action and described the molecular mechanism by which THC impairs cytoskeletal dynamics to inhibit axonal growth (EMBOJ, 2014).

Sumitomo/Sunovion Brain Health Clinical Research Award

Canada

Gustavo Turecki

Dr. Gustavo Turecki’s research focuses on understanding the molecular changes that occur in the brains of individuals who feel so hopeless and depressed that they see suicide as the only way out. Gustavo’s multidisciplinary career has focused on both the influence of life events of the risk of depression, suicide, and suicidal behaviour, and on the epigenetic control of brain function and development. He regularly publishes his work in the highest-ranked journals, including 20 articles in Nature and sister journals such as Nature Neuroscience, all since 2007. His productivity has earned him an h-index of 98, and his nearly 500 publications have collectively been cited over 36,000 times.

Gustavo is a recognized leader in the molecular and genomic aspects of suicide and depression. He is regularly invited to contribute review articles and position papers for leading clinical and scientific journals. These reviews, such as the ones published in Trends in Neuroscience (2012), in Nature Neuroscience Reviews (2014), Molecular Psychiatry (2017), or in Nature Reviews Disease Primers (2019) allow researchers to stay informed of recent molecular and biological advances related to suicide.

Ethics Prize

About The Award
The Ethics Prize in Psychopharmacology will recognise an individual’s outstanding achievements in ethics research within the field of psychopharmacology as well as their contribution to the promotion of public awareness of ethics in psychopharmacology and contributions to the world-wide solution of issues and questions within the ethical practice of psychopharmacology. While the subject of ethics involves all of human behaviour; ethics within medicine and medical research, particularly within the field of psychopharmacology, raises numerous sensitive issues related to the very essence of human nature.

United States

Paul Appelbaum

Dr. Paul Appelbaum has headed an NIH-funded center for studies of ethical, legal and social issues in neuropsychiatric and behavioral genetics at Columbia. He has identified many of the ethical challenges associated with advances in psychiatric genetics, the ethics and effects of research on genetic bases for addictions, the preferences of people with disabilities (including psychiatric disabilities) regarding inclusion in genomic research, and popular understandings of the genetic bases of antisocial behavior. He co-led a project on the ethics of genetic research on intelligence, and has written on return of research results, informed consent and other aspects of genetic research.

Dr. Appelbaum’s prominence as a psychiatric ethicist has been recognized with his appointments as chair of the APA’s Ethics Review Board, the WPA’s Standing Committee on Ethics, and the ACNP Ethics Committee. He has received AMA’s Award for Leadership in Medical Ethics and Professionalism, and a Special Presidential Commendation from the APA for his ethics leadership. His contributions have led to his election to the U.S. National Academy of Medicine and numerous named lectureships in medical ethics.

Max Hamilton Memorial Award

About the Award
Max Hamilton, M.D., F.R.C.P., F.R.C. Psych., D.P.M. (1912-1988) is best known for his assessment of depressive illness through psychometrics. The Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression is widely used throughout the world, and his 1960 paper on the problem of measuring the severity of depression is probably the most cited medical publication in the second half of the twentieth century. The recipient of the 2020 award will be chosen by an international scientific jury by March 2020. This prize consists of a monetary award of USD 10,000 and an engraved plaque, to be presented at the CINP 2021 Virtual World Congress.

Taiwan

Mu-Hong Chen

Dr. Mu-Hong Chen, M.D., Ph.D. graduated from Department of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University, Taiwan in 2006 and received his general psychiatric training between 2009 and 2013 and completed his child and adolescent psychiatric training in 2014. His research career began in the first year (2009) of the resident training course and joined and completed the rTMS/TBS (theta burst stimulation) clinical trials (as the second author) for treatment-resistant depression (TRD) under Prof Tung-Ping Su’s and Prof Cheng Ta Li’s instructions.

For Dr. Chen’s research hard-working, he received WFSBP poster travel award in 2013, Taiwan- Japanese Young Scientist Award in 2014 and 2015, and Outstanding Research Award and Excellent Research Award for Asian College of Neuropsychopharmacology 2019. Dr Chen is also enthusiastic in the teaching and got the Clinical Teaching Excellence Physician Award, 2016, Taipei Veterans General Hospital.

Finally, Dr. Chen is also a poet, won several literary awards, and published three poetries, including Sailor’s diary, Quietness, and Gods and Monsters. He also works hard in LGBT mental health and promotes the LGBT psychoeducation for the medical students and psychiatrists.

Rafaelsen Young Investigators Awards

About the Award
In 1986, Ole Rafaelsen and William Bunney were instrumental in establishing a CINP programme supporting the attendance of young scientists at the XVth CINP Congress. That programme was posthumously named the Rafaelsen Fellowship Award to honor Dr. Rafaelsen, who died in 1987.

The recipients of the award were chosen by an international scientific jury. Seven awardees will be selected and presented with the award consisting of registration reimbursement for the CINP 2021 Virtual World Congress, as well as an opportunity to present their abstract orally as part of the Rafaelsen Symposium, after which a jury will name one of the presenters the winner of the CINP prize for the best young researcher (who will receive a diploma).

Lucie Bartova

Dr. 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) and obtained her scientific degree (PhD) in 2019. Simultaneously, she completed her psychotherapeutic training and residency in psychiatry, whereby she has been involved in clinical, psychopharmacotherapeutic and neuroimaging studies focusing predominantly on MDD and schizophrenia. In the past years, Dr. Lucie Bartova has increasingly focused on challenging psychiatric conditions such as treatment resistant depression (TRD). She presented her work at national and international conferences which could be published in known psychiatric journals, received performance scholarship of the MUV as well as travel- and research awards, and 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.

United States

Millie Rincón-Cortés

Millie Rincón-Cortés, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the laboratory of Dr. Anthony Grace at the University of Pittsburg. Here, she has been funded through aT32- Training for Transformative Discovery in Psychiatry Fellowship, an F32 Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to study stress-induced dopamine downregulation in rats and how these effects may differ between the sexes, and a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship to study how adverse postpartum environments influence maternal brain and behavior. Prior to joining the Grace lab, she received her B.S. in Biology from the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez (2009) before completing a PhD in Neuroscience and Physiology at the NYU Medical Center’s Sacker Institute for Graduate Biomedical Sciences (2015). Her dissertation work was conducted under the supervision of Dr. Regina Sullivan and funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship. Dr. Rincón-Cortés was awarded the Sackler Dissertation Prize by the NYU School of Medicine and the Dissertation Award by the International Society for Developmental Psychobiology (ISDP) for this work.

Australia

Zachary Gerring

Zachary Gerring is a human geneticist specialising in the statistical analysis of common complex traits. His expertise spans statistical genetic and genomic analysis, epidemiology, bioinformatics and biostatistics. Zac is a postdoctoral fellow at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research Berghofer (QIMRB) in Australia, where, as a member of the psychiatric genomics consortium, he has made a substantial contribution to the functional analysis of neuropsychiatric disorders. Most notably, he developed a gene co-expression network-based analytical approach for the functional interpretation of genome-wide association data, as well as a gene-based method for the identification of candidate causal genes underlying complex traits. Zac is currently working on the integration of gene co-expression network data with a large database of drug-gene signatures to identify drug compounds that target dysfunctional mechanisms underlying Alzheimer’s disease.

United Kingdom

Chandi Hindocha

Dr. Chandni Hindocha graduated with a PhD in Psychopharmacology in 2018 from University College London (UCL). Her research focuses on the behavioural, neuroimaging and genetic risk factors that lead people to experience the acute and chronic effects of cannabis. She has 35 publications of which 15 are first-author papers.

She has a strong background in clinical trials of highly regulated investigative medicinal products, experimental and translational medicine using both longitudinal and cross-sectional research. Chandni is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit and the Translational Psychiatry Research Group, University College London.

Austria

Pia Baldinger-Melich

Pia Baldinger-Melich received her doctoral degree in 2009, and joined the Neuroimaging Lab at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the Medical University of Vienna in April 2010 and was involved in the planning and implementation of several neuroimaging studies (using PET and MRI), especially with regard to mood and anxiety disorders. In 2015 she finish successfully the doctoral program “Clinical Neuroscience” (PhD) in the field of imaging genetics. In 2016 she became Assistant Professor and has since then dedicated her work on the search for imaging markers of depression and antidepressant treatments, including electroconvulsive therapy. Since 2018, Pia Baldinger-Melich is a senior physician at the Intermediate Care Unit of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the Medical University of Vienna.

Brazil

Giselli Scaini

Giselli Scaini received her PharmD degree (2008), a master’s degree (2010), and her PhD (2014), in Health Science from the University of Southern Santa Catarina (UNESC, Brazil). Currently, she is an instructor at the Faillace Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and a translational researcher in the field of biological psychiatry. Scaini’s translational research is focused on understanding the complex interactions between molecular and cellular mechanisms and cognitive impairment, behavioral, and neuroanatomical changes in psychiatry disorders, especially in mood disorders.

China

Hon-Cheong So

Hon-Cheong So is a physician-scientist who was trained both clinical medicine and statistical genomics. He was enrolled in the first intercalated MBBS-PhD program in Hong Kong and received his graduate education in statistical and psychiatric genomics. His main research interest lies in the development and applications of statistical and computational methodologies in analyzing “omics” and clinical data, with a special interest in psychiatry. For example, together with colleagues, they have developed methods to decipher the genetic architecture of complex diseases, performed risk prediction and subtyping of psychiatric disorders by both clinical and genomic data, and repositioned existing drug for new indications in psychiatry. The over-arching goal is to translate genomics findings into clinical practice, with the hope to improve diagnosis and treatment of complex diseases.

Student Encouragement Awards

Yui Asaoka, Japan
Yee-Lam Elim Chan, Taiwan
Chun-Hung Chang, Taiwan
Hsuan-Te Chu, Taiwan
Tomonori Hara, Japan
Cassandra Jay Hatzipantelis, Australia
Mao-Hsuan Huang, Taiwan
Arkadiusz Komorowski, Austria
Aika Kosuge, Japan
Hisayoshi Kubota, Japan
Shunya Kurokawa, Japan
Yuka Kusui, Japan
Chi-Wei Lee, Taiwan
Da-Zhong Luo, Taiwan
Hajime Miyanishi, Japan
Youge Qu, Japan
Joep Titulaer, Sweden
Shih-Chun Wan, Taiwan
Siming Wang, Japan
Ana Weidenauer, Austria

CINP 2020/21 Awardees

Pioneer Awards

Oleh Hornykiewicz

Judith Rapoport

Torgny Svenson

Oleh Hornykiewicz

Judith Rapoport

Torgny Svenson

Sumitomo/Sunovion Brain Health Basic Research Award

Tibor Harkany

Tibor Harkany

Sumitomo/Sunovion Brain Health Clinical Research Award

Gustavo Turecki

Gustavo Turecki

Ethics Prize

Paul Appelbaum

Paul Appelbaum

Max Hamilton Memorial Award

Mu-Hong Chen

Mu-Hong Chen

Rafaelsen Young Investigators Awards

Lucie Bartova

Millie Rincón-Cortés

Zachary Gerring

Chandi Hindocha

Pia Baldinger-Melich

Giselli Scaini

Hon-Cheong So

Lucie Bartova

Millie Rincón-Cortés

Zachary Gerring

Chandi Hindocha

Pia Baldinger-Melich

Giselli Scaini

Hon-Cheong So

Student Encouragement Awards

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