International Speakers

Cameron Carter
Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology, University of
California; Director, UC Davis Imaging Research Center, USA
Professor Cameron Carter received his medical education at the University of Western Australia and his psychiatry residency training at the University of California at Davis. In 1993 he moved to the University of Pittsburgh to obtain advanced training in cognitive neuroscience and non-invasive brain imaging. In October 2003 Prof. Carter assumed a new position as Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the University of California at Davis where he directs the Imaging Research Center at the University as well as the Schizophrenia Research Program, which includes the innovative EDAPT (Early Diagnosis and Preventive Treatment) clinic.

Prof. Carter’s research career has been primarily focused on understanding the neural basis of cognition, and the circuitry and mechanisms underlying impaired cognition in schizophrenia, with the goal of developing more effective therapies to improve patients’ chances of rehabilitation. His research also focuses on the development of new treatments for cognitive disability in schizophrenia and other brain disorders.

Shitij Kapur
Vice Dean (Research) and Professor at the Institute of Psychiatry King’s College, London, UK.
Dr. Kapur moved to his current post in 2007 after serving as Canada Research Chair for Schizophrenia and Therapeutic Neuroscience, Chief of Research at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, and a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto.

His research has focused on the use of brain imaging and animal models to understand the basis of psychosis and its treatment. His work has confirmed that all antipsychotics block dopamine D2 receptors in patients to different degrees and that these differences are clinically very meaningful. It has shown the consequences of too much D2 blockade and has helped move the field towards lower doses and better understanding of the basis of antipsychotic action. Working with basic science colleagues Dr. Kapur has focused on how animal models can be used to derive more innovative treatments for schizophrenia, and this work has pointed to the central importance of appropriate dosing, ‘sensitization’ and the difference between continuous and intermittent dosing in schizophrenia. His latest work uses psychological theories, computational models, and phenomenological experience of patients and combines them into a “salience hypothesis” to provide a more holistic understanding of the experience of psychosis and the impact of antipsychotic medications.

Dr. Kapur has published over a hundred and eighty papers, made dozens of presentations worldwide, served on scientific advisory boards of international companies and has received numerous national and international awards including the AE Bennett Award of the Society for Biological Psychiatry, the Paul Janssen Award of the CINP, and he is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.

Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg
Director, Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim;
Chairman, Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Heidelberg, Germany
Prior to his work at the Central Institute of Mental Health, Prof Meyer-Lindenberg spent 10 years at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, first as a visiting associate, then staff clinician, then investigator.

His career has combined studies of genetic indicators of mental illness with neuroimaging to help uncover the biological mechanisms of mental disorders, especially schizophrenia and affective disorders, and neural mechanisms of complex social behavior. His long-term goal is to move these mechanistic insights into novel treatments.

Among other awards, Prof Meyer-Lindenberg has been awarded the ACNP Elkes Award, the Bennett Award of the Society for Biological Psychiatry, and the Nature Medicine Prize for Translational Neuroscience. He is a 2009 NARSAD Distinguished Investigator.

He has authored more than 110 articles for journals such as Science, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Medicine, and PNAS. Prof Meyer-Lindenberg received his M.D. from the University of Bonn, a Ph.D. (Habilitation) from the University of Giessen, and a M.Sc. in Mathematics from the University of Hagen, in Germany.

David Penn
Professor of Psychology and Associate Director of Clinical Training, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, USA
David Penn is Professor of Psychology and Associate Director of Clinical Training at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

His primary research interests are in social cognition and psychosocial treatment for schizophrenia. In particular, how social cognition (i.e., emotion perception, attributional style, and theory of mind) changes across the course of the illness, its neural basis, and how social cognition relates to social functioning.

More recently, Prof Penn has conducted studies examining individual CBT for schizophrenia, group CBT for individuals with medication-resistant auditory hallucinations, illness management and recovery, CBT for first episode psychosis, and Social Cognition and Interaction Training (SCIT). He has also conducted research in the area of reducing stigma associated with schizophrenia.

He has over 130 publications in the areas of social cognition in schizophrenia, psychosocial treatment of schizophrenia, and stigma. His research has been supported by NIMH, the Stanley Foundation and NARSAD. In 2008, Prof Penn was named one of the “top producers of scholarly publications in clinical psychology Ph.D. programs (from 2000-2004)” by the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Australian Speakers

Assen Jablensky
Professor of Psychiatry, University of Western Australia
Director, Centre for Clinical Research in Neuropsychiatry
Having completed his medical degree and training as a psychiatrist in Bulgaria and the UK, Prof. Jablensky has worked as a researcher and clinician in Switzerland (WHO, Geneva), the US (Stanford University) and Bulgaria, where he was Director of the National Program of Brain and Behaviour Research (1987-1992). The main focus of his research is on psychiatric epidemiology, genetics, classification of mental disorders, and psychotic disorders.

From 1974 to 1987, he held a senior position with the World Health Organization in Geneva, being in charge of cross-cultural epidemiological research into schizophrenia and depression. This included the influential WHO Ten-Country Study on Schizophrenia, remaining as one of the most widely quoted papers in the psychiatric literature. During 1982-1987 he chaired the WHO Task Force which developed the ICD-10 diagnostic criteria for mental disorders. Since moving to Australia in 1993, Prof. Jablensky has been Chief Investigator of the Study on Low-Prevalence (Psychotic) Disorders, part of the Australian National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing (1997-1998) and Director of the Centre for Clinical Research in Neuropsychiatry (University of Western Australia), in addition to being the Chief Investigator on a number of NHMRC and overseas (US) research grants. Prof. Jablensky is Corresponding Editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry and member of the editorial boards of International Review of Psychiatry, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, and several other journals.

Prof. Jablensky has over 300 publications, of which over 120 are articles in peer-reviewed research journals and over 100 are book chapters and books. He has been awarded the Strömgren Prize and medal for psychiatric epidemiology; the ASPR Founders Medal, the Organon Research Prize, and the Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (UK). Apart from research, Prof. Jablensky is a practicing clinician and teacher.

Eóin Killackey
Senior Research Fellow & Clinical Psychologist, University of Melbourne
Director of Psychosocial Research, Centre for Youth Mental Health
Dr. Eóin Killackey is the Ronald Phillip Griffith Fellow, Senior Research Fellow and Clinical Psychologist at ORYGEN Research Centre and the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry at The University of Melbourne. He completed his doctorate at Deakin University in 2000. He has worked as a clinical psychologist in adolescent and adult public mental health settings. His research is primarily in the area of psychological and psychosocial interventions in first episode psychosis, specifically functional recovery in first-episode psychosis with particular emphasis on vocational rehabilitation. He is also interested in evidence-based interventions in mental health and barriers to their implementation. He has been successful in attracting a large amount of research funding for this. Additionally he is a founder of the International First Episode Vocational Recovery group and was recently awarded the 2008 Australasian Society for Psychiatric Research’s Schering-Plough Organon Prize. In October 2009 he was promoted to Associate Professor effective from 1 January 2010.

John McGrath
Director, Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research
Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland
John McGrath is a psychiatrist based at the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research, and the Queensland Brain Institute. His research aims to generate and evaluate nongenetic risk factors for schizophrenia. He has forged productive cross-disciplinary collaborations linking risk factor epidemiology with developmental neurobiology. In addition, he has supervised major systematic reviews of the incidence and prevalence of schizophrenia.

Cyndi Shannon Weickert
Macquarie Group Foundation Chair of Schizophrenia Research
Schizophrenia Research Institute; the University of New South Wales;
the Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute.
Professor Shannon Weickert’s research is focused on the molecular developmental neurobiology of schizophrenia. She earned a PhD in Biomedical Science at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York City and completed postdoctoral training with Dr. Joel Kleinman at the National Institutes of Mental Health in Washington, DC rising to the level of Unit Chief of MiNDS (Molecules in the Neurobiology and Development of Schizophrenia). Her awards include the Eli Lilly Young Investigator Award, NIH Fellows Award for Research Excellence, Independent Investigator Award from NARSAD and two Young Investigator Awards from NARSAD. She currently has research support from three NHMRC project grants and two Stanley Medical Research grants. She has lectured throughout the world and has over 80 publications.

Professor Shannon Weickert’s currently leads the Schizophrenia Research Laboratory. Her major focus is to understand how genetic variants of hormone receptors and growth factors impact the development and function of the primate cerebral cortex during adolescence and how these factors may be altered in schizophrenia. Genetic variants of several developmentally important genes have been associated with schizophrenia, however the mechanism by which these variants lead to the disease is unknown. Currently, her group is exploring the molecular mechanism of how alterations in estrogen receptor and neuregulin may act to bring about schizophrenia by examining human brain tissue and primary neuronal culture. Her research is also directly analysing human genomic DNA and performing comparative genomic studies that are aimed at more clearly pinpointing DNA sequence variations in susceptibility genes that may be critical in determining the vulnerability to schizophrenia.