Invited Speakers

Maria Melchior holds a ScD (Harvard University) and is accredited to supervise research (UVSQ). She is Director of Research at Inserm. In 2025-2026, she holds the annual Chair in Public Health at the Collège de France. Her work focuses on social inequalities in mental health and addictive behaviors, with a particular interest in developmental trajectories from childhood to adulthood and intergenerational transmission. 

Her research is mainly based on longitudinal cohort data (ELFE, TEMPO, CONSTANCES in France, DNBC in Denmark). She received the Research Prize from the European Psychiatric Association (2012), the Early Career Award from the International Society of Behavioral Medicine (2004), and the MILDECA Addiction Research Prize (2018). She is the author or co-author of more than 280 original articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Her projects are funded by the ANR, the Fond de Lutte contre les Addictions, the EU (H2020), and the ERC (Consolidator 2021-2025).

Bernet Elzinga is Professor of Stress-related Disorders and Chair of the Section of Clinical Psychology at Leiden University. Her research focuses on the long-term psychological, social, and neurobiological consequences of trauma and stress, with particular attention to the intergenerational transmission of trauma and depression. Through an interdisciplinary approach that bridges clinical psychology, neuroscience, epidemiology, and qualitative research, she investigates how adverse experiences affect individuals and families across generations. 

A central theme in her work concerns family dynamics in the context of depression and trauma, including family dynamics, communication patterns between parents and adolescents, differences in perceptions of family relationships, and mechanisms through which vulnerability to depression and trauma may be transmitted from one generation to the next. In recent years, her research has increasingly focused on prevention and resilience, examining how parents can effectively support children and adolescents experiencing depression or trauma. Together with clinical partners, she co-developed the eight-week parenting intervention “Stronger Together,” designed to strengthen family support for adolescents with depression. 

Professor Elzinga was trained as an experimental and clinical psychologist and philosopher at the University of Amsterdam, and as a psychotherapist in Cognitive Behaviour therapy. Her diverse academic and clinical background is reflected in her integrative research style, combining experimental methods, brain imaging, longitudinal cohort studies, and qualitative approaches to better understand mental health and recovery. 

Her work has been widely recognized through prestigious research grants, including the VENI, VIDI, and VICI awards from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). She is also one of the principal investigators of the national Gravitation programme “New Science of Mental Disorders” a large-scale interdisciplinary initiative aimed at advancing the understanding of mental illness. 

In 2021, Professor Elzinga was elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), and in 2024 she received the prestigious Spinoza Prize, the highest scientific distinction in the Netherlands.

Dr. Effy Vayena is Professor of Bioethics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETH Zürich) and since January 2026, she is member of the ETH Zurich Executive Board as Vice President for Knowledge Transfer and Corporate relations. In her work, she investigates how advances in science and technology can be ethically applied for best outcomes in public and personal health. Vayena completed her education as a social historian with a PhD in Medical History from the University of Minnesota and a habilitation on Bioethics and Health Policy at the University of Zurich. A keen interest in health policy led her to work for the World Health Organization. In 2015, Vayena was awarded a prestigious Swiss National Science Foundation professorship, which enabled her to establish the Health Ethics and Policy Lab at ETH Zurich. This innovative lab addresses the ethical dilemmas emerging from cutting-edge biotech research, including genomic technologies and artificial intelligence. Vayena has served as Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, where she was previously a Fellow and has co-chaired the WHO’s expert advisory group on Artificial Intelligence health ethics and governance. She is an elected member of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Advisory Board for the Global Risks Report. Renowned for her insights into the ethics and governance of digitalization and AI, Vayena frequently advises governments, policy institutions and public and private organizations. Her contributions continue to shape the future of health ethics and policy on a global scale.

Philip Shaw is the Director of the King’s Maudsley Partnership for Child and Young People at the Pears Maudsley Centre.   He is also the Head of the Department for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London.  Previously, he was a Senior Investigator at the National Human Genome Research Institute.  His research program examines the interplay of genomic and environmental factors in shaping the developmental trajectories of brain and behavior, with a focus on attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). His team is currently focused on translating new discoveries into tools for prognosis and into novel treatments.  He is a Professor of Developmental Psychiatry at King’s College and Professor of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

Argyris Stringaris is a clinician scientist and the Chair of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at UCL since January 2022 and he is also a Professor at the University of Athens (NKUA) in Greece and his main goal is to understand and improve young people’s mental health.

He is also Co-Director of the AIM lab and a Consultant at the AIM clinic at UCL. He is also one of UCL’s Pro-Vice-Provosts co-leading the Grand Challenges for Mental Health and Wellbeing. He was until 2022 Senior Investigator and Chief of the Section of Clinical and Computational Psychiatry at NIMH/NIH in the USA and before that a Senior Lecturer and a Wellcome Trust Fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London. He trained in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital.

He is funded by the Wellcome Trust to discover what treatments work for young people with anxiety and depression and the mechanisms underlying them. He tries to integrate his clinical and research work with statistical and computational work and maintain a critical view of the scientific process as informed by philosophy and related fields. His work is only possible through cross-disciplinary collaborations.

Dr. Christina Dalla is Professor of Pharmacology at the Medical School, 2^nd Department of Obstetrics – Gynecology, Aretaieio Hospital of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She is also President of the Hellenic Brain Council, member of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) Executive Committee, past-President of the Mediterranean Neuroscience Society, President of the Hellenic University Women Association and General-Secretary of the Institute of Stress Biology and Medicine. She is also chair of the Communication Committee of the Federation of European neuroscience Societies/FENS and member of the Gender Equality Committee of her University. She is co-chair of the event’s working group at ALBA Network: towards diversity and equity in brain sciences and section-editor at European Journal of Neuroscience. She also serves at committees at the National Medicines Association of Greece (EOF), the Hellenic Ministry of Health and she is external evaluator of the EC Ethics & Research Integrity Unit. She is an active member of the ECNP Psychedelics Network and Preclinical Data Network Forum. Her work focuses on sex differences in neuropsychiatric disorders and novel treatments with a focus on depression and anxiety. She is vice-chair of the EU-SABV COST Action on Sex as a Biological Variable and WP Leader at the Marie Curie Doctoral Network ‘INTEGRATE’ on Psychedelics funded by Horizon Europe, 2026–2030. Dr. Dalla received her first diploma from the Pharmacy School of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in 2000 and continued her studies in Neuropsychopharmacology, Behavioral Neuroendocrinology and Neurosciences in Athens, at the University of Liege in Belgium and at the Rutgers University of New Jersey, U.S.A. with two European Union Marie Curie Fellowships. She has received numerous awards and distinctions, such as the “L’Oreal-Unesco” for Greek Women in Science, the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology/ ECNP fellowship award and in 2025 the “Aristidin award” for Excellence in Pharmacy.

Mónica Guxens is a medical doctor specialized in Preventive Medicine and Public Health. She obtained the PhD degree in 2008 and several Spanish competitive contracts: Río Hortega (2008), Miguel Servet I (2013), and Miguel Servet II (2018). She is an ICREA Research Professor since December 2024. In 2016 she won the prestigious Walter A. Rosenblith New Investigator Award from Health Effects Institute, USA. She is the Director of the INMA Project, a unique multi-site birth cohort in Spain. She established myself as an international researcher (i.e., Adjunct Professor at Erasmus MC University Medical Centre; visiting scientist at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health) and an internationally and nationally recognized expert (e.g., Scientific Advisory Board member of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research Leipzig; Associate Editor of European Journal of Epidemiology; member of several Spanish scientific and advisory committees; consolidated research group by the Catalan Governement).

She is carrying out pioneering research in the field of environmental epidemiology and child health, with a special focus on brain development. Her work has provided unique insights between air pollution exposure and impaired executive function and brain morphology and connectivity in children. In an innovative extension to this research, she has uncovered the role of novel environmental exposure, such as outdoor temperature, on psychiatric symptoms, brain development, and sleep in the context of the climate change. Her research integrates state-of-the-art statistical methods, including longitudinal within-person change, life-course epidemiology, causal mediation analysis, and the identification of susceptibility periods, to clarify causal links between environmental exposures and neurodevelopment. She has substantial expertise in large-scale cohort studies.

Renaud Jardri is a Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Lille School of Medicine (UFR3S), France, and a Senior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France. He leads the Psychiatry, Subjectivity & Inference (LillePSI) team at the Lille Neuroscience & Cognition Centre (INSERM U-1172). He also serves as Research Director of the CURE Clinical Investigation Centre (CIC-Psy, CHU Lille) and heads the Expert Centre for Rare Diseases with Psychiatric Phenotypes (PsyRARE) at CHU Lille. In teaching, he coordinates the “Perinatal Psychiatry” specialization within the Psychiatry-CAP residency training and is the French coordinator of the European Master in Neurotechnology. His research focuses on uncovering the neural mechanisms underlying aberrant percepts (e.g., hallucinations, delusions) in children, adolescents, and young adults. His work integrates experimental psychology, computational modeling, brain imaging, and developmental approaches. Recent research activity is available at https://pro.univ-lille.fr/renaud-jardri/

Dietrich Oberwittler is a criminologist and research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law in Freiburg (Germany), and Professor of Sociology at the University of Freiburg. His research interests include adolescent delinquency, community effects on crime and social cohesion, victimization and policing. He studied social sciences and history at the Universities of Münster, Bonn and University College London and received a Dr. phil. at the University of Trier for a thesis on the development of youth justice in Germany and England between 1850 and 1920. He was the PI of several research projects on neighbourhood effects on adolescent delinquency, on police-adolescent relations, on victimization and security perceptions in urban communities, and on honour killings. He collaborated with the Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study (PADS+), University of Cambridge, and with colleagues at Science Po/CRNS, University of Grenoble (France), at the University of Malmö (Sweden) and at Griffith University (Brisbane/Australia). Together with Robert Svensson he investigated the long-term decline of adolescent crime in Sweden and internationally. He has published articles in leading criminology and sociology journals and is a co-author of “Breaking Rules. The Social and Situational Dynamics of Young People’s Urban Crime” (Oxford University Press, 2012) and the co-editor of the “Handbook on Cities and Crime” (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2025).

Alongside her clinical work, she undertook a range of research, including leading clinical trials of cognitive behaviour therapy.

During this period, she was also awarded two fellowships. The first was funded by the National Institute for Health Research Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre. The second was funded by the Medical Research Council, which enabled her to undertake a PhD at the IoPPN within the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre.

Angela Abela is a full professor at the Department of Child and Family Studies at the University of Malta. She holds a PhD from the Tavistock Clinic and the University of London, and a Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from the Université de La Sorbonne Paris V.She is a clinical psychologist and a family therapist. Throughout her career, she has played a pioneering role in the Maltese academic and professional landscape, notably setting up the Centre for Family Studies and serving as the first Director of Studies for the Master in Clinical, Counselling, and Educational Psychology.

As the former President of the Maltese Psychological Association, Professor Abela played a leading role in the setting up of the psychology profession in Malta. She also spearheaded the creation of the Maltese Association for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice (MAFT-SP).

Her leadership extends into public policy; she is a former chairperson of the National Family Commission and currently serves as Deputy Chairperson of the Committee for Positive Parenting and the Strengthening of Families. She frequently acts as a consultant for the Maltese Parliament on social and family affairs and supervises professionals within public social agencies.

Her research focuses on children and families. She has published widely, including on vulnerable populations, such as children in care and families living in poverty. She has led significant national projects, such as a pilot study on perinatal mental health and a current one focusing on mapping families with young children aimed at breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty.

On an international level, Professor Abela is a longstanding expert for the Council of Europe. Between 2019 and 2023, she co-led a EurofamNet Cost Action group involving 35 countries, resulting in a key framework for child and family support policies across Europe. A widely published scholar, she serves as an International Advisory Editor for Contemporary Family Therapy. In 2022, her extensive contributions were honoured with the European Family Therapy Association award for excellence in research and systemic practice.

Emily Simonoff is Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London and Honorary Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.  Emily’s research and clinical work focus is on the interplay between neurodevelopmental and mental health disorders in children and young people. She served for two terms as a Senior Investigator for the UK National Institute of Health Research Senior Investigator. She was the Senior Clinical Advisor to the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) on the 2018 ADHD guidelines and was a member of the ICHOM Standard Set for Neurodevelopmental Disorders Advisory Group.    Previously she chaired the European ADHD Guidelines Group and is a member of ADHD Society, Eunethydis.

In 2024 Emily accepted the role as Chief Investigator for the PATHWAYS Study, which is the large UK study of children and young people with gender incongruence presenting to clinical services.  PATHWAYS is a research programme that includes a longitudinal observational study open to all children and young people attending  MHS Gender Services, a clinical trial of puberty suppressing hormones, a study of brain development and cognition and a qualitative study of  how young people and their parents in make decisions to start puberty suppressing hormones and how they experience the intervention.

David Oppenheim, Ph.D. is Professor of Psychology and Vice Chair of the School for Psychological Sciences at the University of Haifa, Israel. He also heads the Center for the Study of Child Development in that University. Dr. Oppenheim studies parental insightfulness, the capacity to “see things from the child’s point of view”, and parent-child communication regarding children’s emotional experiences, and how both impact young children’s socioemotional development including their attachments to their caregivers. His work stresses the importance of including fathers in addition to mothers, and examining triadic, mother-father-child interactions in addition to dyadic, parent-child interactions. His work also highlights cultural influences, and the degree to which prevailing theories and methods developed in Western contexts apply in other socio-cultural contexts. Dr. Oppenheim studies these issues using longitudinal studies of typically developing children, children with atypical development such as Autism and Intellectual Disability, and children at high risk such as those in foster care and those whose parents experienced trauma. Dr. Oppenheim’s research has been published in more than 100 scholarly papers and book chapters. He lectures internationally, provided keynote talks in scientific conferences, and has been a visiting professor in several universities in Europe and the USA.

Prof. Plener is the Chair of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria and the head of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Vienna General Hospital. He has worked at the University hospital of Ulm (2005-2015) and the Central Institute for Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany (2016), before becoming deputy director and receiving a full professorship at the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Ulm University, Ulm, Germany (2016-2018). He is the coordinator of the Medical University of Vienna’s PhD program in mental health and behavioral medicine. Prof. Plener is member of the Austrian supreme board of health and is the president of the Austrian Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

His research focus is on PTSD, suicidality and NSSI in adolescents. He has up to now published more than 250 papers in peer reviewed journals, three books and 62 book chapters.

Dr. Giovanni Abrahão Salum is the Senior Vice President for Global Programs at the Child Mind Institute and the Director of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Global Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health. He also serves as Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Brazil. Dr. Salum has held several leadership roles in Brazil’s public health system. He served as Director of Mental Health Services at the Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre (2021–2022), and previously directed both the adult and the child & adolescent units of the hospital’s Community Center for Mental Health Services (2019–2021). From 2017 to 2019, he was Director of the Mental Health System in Porto Alegre, overseeing citywide planning and delivery of services. His academic and clinical expertise lies in epidemiology, developmental psychopathology, and treatment research within the public health system. His current work emphasizes the co-creation of grassroots solutions with underserved communities, expanding access and training in evidence-based psychosocial treatments for children and adolescents, and the development of innovative technologies that can be deployed in real-world settings to improve the assessment and treatment of mental health conditions.

Ann-Christin Haag, PhD, is an internationally recognized expert in developmental psychopathology, specializing in the intersection of childhood trauma, digital environments, and adolescent mental health. Currently, she serves as Substitute Professor of Developmental Neuroscience in Psychiatry at the Central Institute of Mental Health, Heidelberg University, and holds the position of Margarete von Wrangell Assistant Professor for Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy with a focus on Research Methods at Ulm University Hospital. She is also the spokesperson for the Early Career Scientists (ECS) at the German Center for Mental Health (DZPG), partner site Ulm, and contributes to the Competence Center Public Child Mental Health, where she helps shape research and policy at the intersection of digital media, trauma, and public mental health.

Her academic journey reflects an international focus: After completing her PhD at the University of Zurich, she conducted postdoctoral research as a fellow at Columbia University, New York. Her work has been further enriched by partnerships with institutions like The Pennsylvania State University and ongoing international collaborations. This global network underpins her innovative research, which integrates machine learning, naturalistic data analysis, and AI-driven approaches to explore risk and resilience in vulnerable youth.

Ann-Christin’s research has been published in high-impact journals such as Nature Human Behaviour, with a focus on posttraumatic stress trajectories, digital media use, and emotion regulation flexibility. Her projects are funded by prestigious institutions, including the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). She has received numerous awards, including the ExzellenziaUlm Prize for outstanding early career researchers and funding from the Margarete von Wrangell Program (Ministry of  Science, Research and Arts Baden-Württemberg) for her innovative work.

As a trained cognitive-behavioral psychotherapist with clinical experience in both Switzerland and Germany, she is deeply committed to mentoring the next generation of researchers. Her leadership in interdisciplinary projects and her role in professional societies underscore her dedication to advancing child and adolescent mental health on a global scale.

Georgina Krebs is Professor of Young People’s Mental Health at University College London, where she co-leads the Anxiety, Self-Image, and Mood (AIM) Lab. Her research focuses on the phenomenology, mechanisms, and treatment of emotional disorders in young people, particularly common yet frequently overlooked conditions such as body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). Her work draws on a wide range of methodologies, including epidemiology, behavioural genetics, experimental psychology, and clinical treatment trials. Funded by organisations including the Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, the National Institute for Health and Care Research, and the British Academy in partnership with the Leverhulme Trust, her research has contributed significantly to the evidence base for youth mental health. She has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, alongside numerous book chapters written for both academic and clinical audiences.

Alongside her academic work, she is an Honorary Consultant Clinical Psychologist and leads the AIM Clinic at UCL, a specialist service supporting students with BDD and related conditions. She is committed to translating research into clinical practice, with the aim of improving and standardising mental health care for young people. She currently serves as the Topic Advisor to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence clinical guideline for obsessive–compulsive disorder and BDD, contributing specialist expertise to the development of evidence-based recommendations. She is also a Clinical Advisor for the BDD Foundation, the only charity Worldwide that is specifically dedicated to support individuals with BDD.

Dejan Stevanović, MD, PhD is a child and adolescent psychiatrist, specialist in neuropsychology, and senior research fellow at the Clinic for Neurology and Psychiatry for Children and Youth in Belgrade, Serbia. His work combines clinical practice with interdisciplinary research in child and adolescent mental health.

The main research focuses are a broad spectrum of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders in youth, particularly autism, ADHD, and related conditions. His work integrates psychiatry, psychology, epidemiology, and neuroscience, with core expertise in psychometrics, cross‑cultural mental health research, and the development and validation of diagnostic and outcome assessment instruments used internationally in clinical research and practice. Clinically, he works extensively with children and adolescents with complex comorbidities across developmental stages, and his research employs longitudinal cohort designs and multi‑informant assessment strategies. A central theme of his work is precision child psychiatry, particularly its application in everyday clinical practice, integrating genetic, neurobiological, developmental, physical health, environmental and emerging digital phenotyping data to advance early detection and personalized care.

Dr. Stevanović contributes to the field through authoring more than 120 peer‑reviewed publications and editorial activities, as well as collaborating widely in international research consortia and networks dedicated to advancing global child and adolescent mental health.

Dieter Wolke is Professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick (Coventry, UK), and founder of the Lifespan, Health and Wellbeing Research Group and now head of the Warwick Lifecourse and Neonatal Group. He is also associated with Warwick Medical School.  He is a member of the interfaculty Centre for Early Life.  His research centres on longitudinal investigations of developmental pathways leading to developmental psychopathology. Over the past 10 years, his research has shifted away from psychopathology to factors that lead to resilient social and emotional development and influence the coping with life tasks across childhood and adulthood. In particular, he studies groups with early experiences of adversity such as very premature infants, infants with regulatory problems (crying, feeding, sleeping), and those who are bullied in the family (i.e. sibling bullying) or at school.

 He received an ERC Advanced Grant in 2022 (2022-2027) and his research group is involved in several funded clinical trials and longitudinal studies. Dieter was or is PI/Co-PI of the Bavarian Longitudinal Study, Epicure,  Home – RECAP preterm and Understanding Society – The UK Household Longitudinal Study. Dieter is a Web of Science Highly Cited author of more than 500 peer-reviewed articles. He received honorary doctorates from the Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum in 2014 and from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Helsinki in 2022. In 2020 he was awarded by the British Psychological Society with the “Distinguished Contribution to Developmental Psychology Award”.

Child psychiatrist, psychoanalyst Former Medical Director of the adolescent psychiatric unit of Gennimatas Hospital in Athens Ex-president of the Hellenic Psychoanalytical Society Member of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society Member of the Executive of the European Psychoanalytical Federation

Cathy is The Paul Professor of Developmental Child Psychology at the University of Oxford and Director of the Oxford Centre for Emerging Minds Research. She is also an Honorary Consultant Clinical Psychologist in Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, an NIHR Senior Investigator, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a Senior Kurti Fellow at Brasenose College, Oxford, and co-lead of the Oxford Health NIHR Biomedical Research Centre Mental Health in Development theme. Her own research particularly focuses on the development, maintenance, and treatment of anxiety disorders in children. She has developed effective psychological interventions that are widely implemented within routine health settings,  and has  written a number of books for parents and clinicians to help families get effective support when they first need it.

Johannes Hebebrand is Senior Professor of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry of the University of Duisburg-Essen. His major research areas include genetics of obesity and eating disorders, assessment of sex, age and height adjusted weight, and the regulation of leptin in anorexia nervosa (AN). His first study to assess serum leptin levels in AN dates back to 1995; subsequent research supported the role of leptin in amenorrhea. He proved that exogenous application of leptin to the best known rat model for AN (anorexia based activity) prevents the development of hyperactivity upon food restriction, leading him to argue that the DSM-IV term ”refusal to maintain body weight at or above minimally normal weight for height/age” is a misnomer. Prior to conducting the first off-label treatment of patients with AN the underlying hypothesis was generated in 2000 and was continuously subjected to fine-tuning. > 600 publications listed in PubMed; Google-Scholar H-Index: 123. Former Editor-in-Chief of European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

Philia Issari is Professor of Counseling Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA). She completed her undergraduate studies in Psychology at the University of Sorbonne (Paris V) in France and postgraduate studies in the USA, where he received a Master of Arts in Classics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and at New York University (NYU) Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology. She then received her Ph.D in Counseling Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

She has worked as a Research Fellow (1995-1998) at the UCLA Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences and at the Integrated, Substance Abuse Programs (ISAP), National Institute of Health (NIH) of the USA. She has been a scientific associate in research programs at NYU and UCLA Universities, and has worked as a therapist in Mental Health and Counseling centers abroad. In Greece, she has participated in European and inter-university training and supervision programs for teachers and counselors in counseling theory and practice, multicultural, narrative and professional counseling, and counseling with a gender perspective – SOS hotline – counseling centers of the General Secretariat for Gender Equality to prevent/combat violence.

Since 2007, she has been teaching at the Department of Psychology of NKUA, courses in counseling psychology and qualitative research approaches in psychology and counseling/clinical practice. She also teaches and supervises theses in Master’s Degree Programs in Counseling Psychology, Educational Counseling, Health & Work, Special Education Counseling, Counseling & Vocational Guidance, School Psychology and Clinical Psychology at the University of Athens and the University of Thessaly. She has taught as a Lecturer at the University of Crete, and was a Guest Lecturer at the University of Roehampton, Department of Psychology, MSc/PsycD in Psychotherapy and Counseling & BSc Integrative Counselling, (January-February, 2013), London.

Her writing work includes articles in international and Greek scientific journals and chapters in collective volumes. Her scientific interests are focused on issues of identity, dialogicity, and the embodied dimension of the self [e. g., Issari, P. (2011). Greek American ethnic identity, cultural experience and the ’embodied language’ of dance: Implications for counseling. International Journal for the Advancement of Counseling, 33(4), 252- 265], multicultural counseling [e. g., Issari, P. (2006). Valuing diversity in schools: Learning from multicultural counseling for teachers in the Greek educational system. International Journal for the Advancement of Counseling, 28 (1), 71-78], in health counseling, adolescent and student well-being, school bullying, crisis, and qualitative research methodology with an emphasis on narrative analysis [e. g., Issari, P., & Karayianni, Th. (2013). Greek mothers’ narratives of the construct of parental involvement. The European Journal of Counseling Psychology, 2(1), 17-32]. He edited K. Gergen’s book, Therapeutic Realities (2006), published by Pedio.

She has participated with oral presentations in international and Greek conferences, is a member of international and Greek scientific societies, and an extraordinary reviewer in English and Greek scientific journals. She participates as a scientific collaborator in the Grundtvig Phototherapy Europe in Prisons (PIP) program, which is implemented in six European countries, with the aim of implementing and evaluating phototherapy techniques in the context of prisoner counseling.

Maja Drobnič Radobuljac is a child and adolescent psychiatrist (CAP) and a professor of psychiatry. She is also a wife and a mother of two who enjoys reading, long walks with her husband and her dog, running, hiking, skiing, swimming, and has practised yoga for more than 30 years.

She currently works as the Head of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Research Director of the University Psychiatric Clinic Ljubljana as well as the head of Chair of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana.

She specialises in working with adolescents with personality disorders, depression, anxiety, gender dysphoria and psychosis. She also completed training in Systemic Family Therapy, MBT-A and is a certified Child Attachment Interview Rater.

She serves as a National Residency Coordinator for child and adolescent psychiatry in Slovenia since 2022. She is a member of the Advisory Board for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry of the Slovenian Ministry of Health since its establishment in 2018, the President of the Slovenian Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, a member of the European Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (ESCAP) Governing Board since July 2023 and a Co-Chair of the ESCAP Policy Division.

During her training, she spent time as an honorary clinical research fellow at the Bethlem Royal Hospital, South London and the Maudsley NHS Trust, and at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Melbourne, Australia. In 2023, she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for a semester as a Visiting Scholar to prof. Carla Sharp, the Developmental Psychopathology Lab, University of Houston, Texas, USA.

Robert Vermeiren (Ghent, 1968) is child and adolescent psychiatrist, Professor of Psychiatry and head of the department of Psychiatry & Psychology at Leiden University Medical Centre. Before becoming Professor of Psychiatry in 2024, he was professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry since 2006. Vermeiren holds numerous roles within Dutch collaborative networks and the Dutch Association of Psychiatry, and serves as co-chair of the Policy Division of the European Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, reflecting his commitment to shaping mental health policy for children and adolescents at both national and European levels.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

A central theme in his work is the observation that the number and severity of mental health problems in young people have increased substantially in recent years, demanding innovative approaches to research and treatment. Core to his methodology is the participation of stakeholders — including young people, parents and professionals — and the use of practice-based methods such as clinical data and qualitative research.

Vermeiren’s research career began in forensic child psychiatry. He completed his PhD in Antwerp in 2001 on a study of youths who had come into contact with the juvenile justice system, and held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Yale Child Study Center. He became professor of forensic child and adolescent psychiatry at VU University Amsterdam in 2006 (until 2016).

Since 2015, Vermeiren’s work has centred on the most complex youth in clinical psychiatry. His research on severe and enduring mental health problems (SEMHP) — youth whose difficulties transcend standard diagnostic categories — has become a defining thread, examining characteristics, treatment focus, and the tension between autonomy and safety. Suicidality and self-harm in complex clinical populations remain core priorities. Equally prominent is his commitment to stakeholder participation, studying how youth, families, and professionals can genuinely co-determine care. Engaging youth as experts by experience — in research, education and clinical practice — runs through virtually all recent work, making participation not just a method but a guiding principle.

Over 300 publications and 9,600 citations reflect the scale of this output. His publication list runs continuously through to 2025 and 2026, with multiple peer-reviewed articles appearing each year on practice based topics. He has supervised over 40 PhD candidates and leads a productive research group at LUMC.

Dr. Konstantinos Kotsis is an Associate Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece. He also serves as Head of the Community Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health (within the Department of Psychiatry at the University General Hospital of Ioannina.

He holds two postgraduate degrees in 1) Social Psychiatry and 2) Health Care Management and has clinical experience in both the National Health System and the Interdisciplinary Support Centers of the Ministry of Education. He awarded his PhD in Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry.

Prof. Kotsis’s research focuses on mental health service delivery, on consultation-liaison psychiatry, and developmental disorders as well. He has contributed to multiple research projects and has published about 50 papers in peer-reviewed journals in these areas.

He has completed advanced training in data analysis and quality of care in mental health services and has engaged in supervised clinical discussions in pediatric psychopharmacology at the Child Mind Institute in New York, USA.

He is an accredited Family Therapist and was a board member of the Hellenic Society for Systemic Thinking & Family Psychotherapy (HESTAFTA).

Prof. Kotsis is a board member of the European Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (ESCAP), Chair of the Early Career and Trainee CAPs committee and ESCAP Communications in ECAP Editor. He is also the Greek delegate in the UEMS-CAP section (European Union for Medical Specialists – Child and Adolescent Psychiatry)

He has also served as President of the Hellenic Society of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (HSCAP) and currently serves as the Vice-President.

Emeritus Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.

Professor Dimitris C. Anagnostopoulos, (date and place of birth: 01/01/1952, Athens, Greece), is Emeritus Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He graduated from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Medical School (1976) and his specialities are in Neurology and Psychiatry (1982) and in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (1988). He is also a graduate of the Hellenic Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association (1996).

He was chairman of the Department of Child Psychiatry of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Medical School in the “Aghia Sophia” Children’s Hospital (2015-2019). He was head of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Unit of the Community Mental Health Centre of Byron-Kesariani, 1st Department of Psychiatry of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Medical School (1989-2014).

For almost forty years, he has been practising clinical psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry and psychoanalytic psychotherapy in the Greek National Mental Health System and since 1989, in the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

Also, he is actively involved in the development and establishment of child and adolescent psychiatry in Greece since early 80’s.

He teaches in pre- and post-medical academic educational programmes, on child and adolescent psychiatry, community psychiatry and psychoanalysis. His main research interests are in developmental disorders (especially learning disorders), community psychiatry, migration and mental health, child and adolescent psychotherapy.

He is a current member of numerous Greek and International professional organizations including the Hellenic Psychiatric Association (www.psych.gr ), where he was general secretary for more than 10 years up to 2010, the Hellenic Society of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (www.hscap.gr ), where he was chair of the Executive Board (2015-2019), and the World Psychiatric Association (www.wpanet.org ), where he is presently honorary member and for two terms (2005-2010) chairman of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry section, and actively involved in the establishment of the Mediterranean Forum, a network of child psychiatrists from all the Med countries under the umbrella of  WPA’s CAP section. Furthermore, he is member of the Psychiatric Association of the Eastern Europe and the Balkans, and was heavily involved in its foundation and progress (www.paeeb.com).

He joined the ESCAP Board in 2011 and was President from 2019 to 2023 and continues on the Board as Past President. He was co-chair of the Policy division (2012-2019), ESCAP communication editor in ECAP journal (2014-2020) and the coordinator of ESCAP’s international project “ESCAP for mental health of child and adolescent refugees” (2015-2018).

After some initial training in mathematics and fundamental physics (Ecole Polytechnique, Paris), Bruno Falissard engaged in medical studies and specialized in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in 1991. He was assistant professor in child and adolescent psychiatry in 1996-1997, associate professor in Public Health in 1997-2002 and full professor in Public health from 2002. He is at the head of the “Center of Epidemiology and Population Health” in Villejuif (650 members). He has a clinical activity in child and adolescent psychiatry. His personal areas of research are about methodology and epistemology of mental health research.  In 2015 he became president of IACAPAP (International Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions, the term ended in 2018) and member of the French Academy of Medicine. He is presently president of SFPEADA (French Society of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions)

Professor Tobias Banaschewski, MD, PhD, is Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Medical Faculty Mannheim of the University of Heidelberg and Medical Director of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry of the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany (since 2006), and Deputy Director of the CIMH (since, 2014). He studied psychology and medicine at Marburg University, Germany.

He is Past-Chair of the European Network of Research on Hyperkinetic Disorders (EUNETHYDIS) and is member of the European ADHD Guidelines Group; Coordinator of the German guidelines for diagnosis and treatment of ADHD in children, adolescents and adults; Past President of the German Society of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy; Directory Board of the German ADHD network. Currently he is inter alia Co-Coordinator of the EU-funded project „environMENTAL – Reducing the impact of major environmental challenges on mental health“, Coordinator of BMBF-funded Project ESCAlife (Evidence-based, Stepped Care of ADHD along the life-span) and Coordinator of the German Guidelines for Diagnoses and Treatment of ADHD in Children, Adolescents and Adults.

His main research areas are: a) developmental trajectories of child and adolescent psychiatric disorders with associated risks and protective factors, b) their underlying etiological and neurobiological mechanisms, c) development of individualized treatment strategies, and d) development of evidence-based clinical guidelines. These topics are addressed through highly interdisciplinary work carried out in the context of national and international research networks and multicenter studies. He published > 800 peer-reviewed publications. Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in Cross-Field – 2024 & 2025. He received the Kramer-Pollnow Award (2003) the August-Homburger Award (2014), the Saarländischer ADHS-Forschungspreis (2016), Eunethydis Lifetime Achievement Award (2024).