Introduction to Plenary Speakers
Hoping that a short introduction to the plenary lectures of the scientific program will tempt you to join the congress and be part of this unique Nordic event. For further information please go to www.ncp2021.fi.
Professor Merete Nordentoft, Copenhagen
Professor Merete Nordentoft will hold a plenary lecture titled: Improving treatment of people with psychotic illnesses: lessons from randomized clinical trials. She is an expert in suicidal behavior, and a pioneer in early intervention in psychosis. She was PI for many large randomized clinical trials, evaluating the effect of psychosocial intervention, of which the Danish OPUS trial (specialized assertive intervention in first episode psychosis) is the most well-known. She received the award “Global Excellence in Health” in 2012 and 2016; the Richard Wyatt Award in 2016, The Marie and August Krogh Award in 2017, and The Danish Medical Association’s Honorific Award in 2018.
Professor emeritus Ian Michael Goodyer, Cambridge
Professor emeritus Ian Michael Goodyer will hold a plenary lecture: Adolescent Mental Health: From Brain to Therapeutics. As a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist his research uses different approaches to measure the effects of the social environment on cognition, brain structures and mental disorders. The therapeutics research has resulted in a new brief psychosocial intervention (BPI) adopted by NICE UK as a treatment for unipolar Depression in Adolescents. He has received 3 awards and was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 1999, and awarded the OBE for Psychiatry Research in the New Year Honours list 2017.
Professor Pim Cuijpers, Amsterdam
Professor Pim Cuijpers will give a plenary lecture on: The future of psychotherapy. He is specialised in conducting randomised controlled trials and meta-analyses on prevention and psychological treatments of common mental disorders across the life. He has more than 900 publications and he is on the Thomson-Reuter Web of Science lists of the ‘highly cited researchers’ since the first edition of this list in 2014.
Professor Emerita Riitta Hari, Aalto University, Finland
Riitta Hari is Professor Emerita, Aalto University, Finland. Her plenary lecture is titled: Brain basis of social interaction. Her research is on systems-level neuroscience and human brain imaging, and has provided fundamental insights into human sensory, motor, cognitive, and social functions in both healthy and diseased individuals. She has received honoris causa doctorates in science (2003), medicine (2005), and technology (2016), and is Academician of Science in Finland since 2010, and member of the National Academy of Sciences USA since 2004.
Mark Daly, Director of the Institute for Molecular Medicine, Finland
Mark Daly is Director of the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland and with affiliations at the Harvard Medical School, Boston. He will hold a plenary lecture on: Genetic architecture of psychiatric traits and disorders - shared and specific biological mechanisms.
His research focuses on the development and application of statistical methods for the discovery and interpretation of genetic variation responsible for complex human disease. Further he has made major contributions to gene discovery in several disorders and is a co-architect of the FinnGen project, a landmark effort to integrate medical registry data with genomic data in 10% of the Finnish population.
He coordinates the leadership team of the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative (HGI) (https://www.covid19hg.org) to bring together the human genetics research community to generate, share, and analyse data to define the genetic determinants of COVID-19 susceptibility, severity, and outcomes. He has 478 peer-reviewed manuscripts and has been listed by Thompson ISI/Science Watch in 2008 and 2010 as one of the top ten authors ranked by number of high-impact papers.
Dan Chisholm, Programme Manager for Mental Health at the WHO Regional Office for Europe, Copenhagen
Dan Chisholm is Programme Manager for Mental Health at the WHO Regional Oyce for Europe Copenhagen. He will give a plenary lecture: Public mental health needs and responses in the context of COVID-19: a blueprint for the future?
He works with WHO Member States and other partners to develop and implement national mental health policies and plans, as well as provide guidance, tools and advocacy for the promotion of mental health and the development of prevention, treatment and recovery services across the life-course. His main areas at WHO included development and monitoring of global mental health plans and activities, technical assistance on mental health system strengthening, and analysis of the cost-effectiveness of strategies for reducing the impact of mental disorders. □