EBC Board and Administrative Officers

President
Mary G Baker, MBE

EFNA Past President

Mary G Baker MBE, is President of the EBC, Past President of the European Federation of Neurological Associations (EFNA), Past President of the European Parkinson’s Disease Association (EPDA), a consultant to the WHO and Chair of their Working Group on Parkinson’s Disease. She serves on the Innovative Medicines Initiative Scientific Committee, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry’s (ABPI) Code of Practice, and the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) Management Board. She is Director at Large for the World Stroke Association and Chair of the British Medical Journal’s Patient Advisory Group.

Vice President
Monica Di Luca

FENS

Monica Di Luca has been professor of Pharmacology  at the University of Milano since 1999.

In 1986 she graduated in Pharmacology and medicinal Chemistry at the University of Milano, in 1992 she discussed her PhD thesis at the University of Milano, and in 1993 she completed a PhD programme in the laboratory of Molecular Biology  of the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands.  Her primary research interest in related to brain and synaptic plasticity both in physiological and pathological conditions, with the primary aim to apply her basic findings to the cure of neurodegenerative diseases. She is author of more that 100 scientific publications on peer reviewed journals.

Monica DiLuca is member of Council and Executive committee of several  national and international scientific organization. From 2000 to 2006 she performed as secretary general of Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and form 2005 she is Chair of the Western Europe Chapter of IBRO. She is actually Vice-President of European Brain Council.

Vice President
Prof David Nutt

ECNP

Prof David Nutt is currently the Edmund J Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology and director of the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit in the Division of Experimental Medicine at Imperial College London.

He received his undergraduate training in medicine at Cambridge and Guy's Hospital, and continued training in neurology to MRCP.  After completing his psychiatric training in Oxford, he continued there as a lecturer and then later as a Wellcome Senior Fellow in psychiatry. He then spent two years as Chief of the Section of Clinical Science in the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in NIH, Bethesda, USA. On returning to England in 1988 he set up the Psychopharmacology Unit in Bristol University, an interdisciplinary research grouping spanning the departments of Psychiatry and Pharmacology before moving to Imperial College London in December 2008 where he leads a similar group with a particular focus on brain imaging especially PET. 

He is currently Chair of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD) and President of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP), a council member of the European Brain Council, President-elect of the British Neuroscience Association, the UK Director of the European Certificate and Masters in Affective Disorders Courses and a member of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy. In addition, he has edited the Journal of Psychopharmacology for over a decade and acts as the psychiatry advisor to the British National Formulary. He has published over 400 original research papers, a similar number of reviews and books chapters, eight government reports on drugs and 26 books.

Previously he has been member and Chair of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD – 1998-2009), President of the British Association of Psychopharmacology (BAP), member of the HEFCE/NHS Senior Lecturer Selection Panel and member of the MRC Neuroscience Board.  Other previous national contributions include membership of the Independent Inquiry into the Misuse of Drugs Act (2000 Runciman report), and membership of the Committee on Safety of Medicines (2000 – 2005) and member of the Ministry of Defence Science Advisory Board (2005-2007).  He was the clinical scientific lead on the 2004/5 UK Government Foresight initiative “Brain science, addiction and drugs” that provided a 25-year vision for this area of science and public policy and in 2006 he was Director of Bristol Neuroscience. 

He broadcasts widely to the general public both on radio and television including recent BBC Horizon on drug harms and their classification. He also lecturers widely to the public as well as to the scientific and medical communities; for instance has presented three time at the Cheltenham Science Festival and several times for Café Scientifiques.  In 2010 he was listed as one of the 100 most important figures in British Science by The Times Eureka science magazine.

Secretary General
Dolores Gauci

GAMIAN EUROPE

Dolores Gauci is President of GAMIAN-Europe, a pan-European federation of patient advocacy groups whose mission is to encourage and promote information, education and awareness on current knowledge of the treatment and support available to those affected by mental illness. She holds an M.Sc in Health Services Management and is a Social Worker by profession. Dolores is the Chief Executive Officer of the Richmond Foundation – the only NGO in Malta working in Community Mental Health. Mrs Gauci also lectures at the University of Malta providing a service to both the Department of Social Policy and Social Work and the Department of Psychology.

Treasurer
Alistair Newton

Alistair Newton is Executive Director (and Past President) of the European Dystonia Federation, Past Secretary-General of European Federation of Neurological Associations (EFNA) and Treasurer of EBC. He has held positions in a number of British and European organisations involved in patient-related and scientific activities and has led or contributed to many projects which aim to improve the lives of people living with brain disorders.

Board member
Manfred Westphal

Manfred Westphal is Secretary General of the EBC, past Secretary of the European Association of Neurosurgical Societies (EANS), Director of the Department of Neurosurgery. He is a member of the Deutschen Gesellschaft für Neurochirurgie (German Neurosurgical Society), the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and the Congress of Neurological Surgeons and currently the chairman of the Committee for Neuro-Oncology of the World Federation of Neurological Surgeons.

Board member
Celso Arango

Celso Arango, MD, PhD is a psychiatrist and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Maryland in Baltimore and Full Professor of Psychiatry at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid. He is also Head of the Child and Adolescent Department of Psychiatry at Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón. Dr. Arango is the Scientific Director of the Spanish Psychiatric Research Network with 25 centers and more than 400 researchers. He is also Coordinator of the Child and Adolescent First-Episode Psychosis Study (CAFEPS) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Health (with eight centers in Spain) and the Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry Network funded by the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP). He has written more than 240 peerreviewed articles, 6 books, and more than 35 book chapters. Many of his articles and book chapters have focused on the neurobiology of early-onset and first-episode psychoses as well as the safety of psychiatric medications in pediatric patients. In addition, his group has shown how patients with a first psychotic episode experience greater losses of gray matter than expected and a correlation of gray matter loss with antioxidant status. Dr. Arango has participated in more than 62 competitively funded research projects, as Principal Investigator in 46 of them, including projects with international funding (Stanley Foundation, NARSAD, European Commission, etc.) and several clinical drug trials. He is also coordinator of several multicenter projects that assess multiple prognostic factors and treatment in early-onset psychosis, and is currently participating in five EU projects funded by the VII Framework.

Board member
Richard Hughes MD FRCP FMedSci

Richard Hughes is President of the European Federation of Neurological Societies www.efns.org, Emeritus Professor of Neurology at King’s College London and Honorary Professor University College London. He trained at Clare College, Cambridge, Guy’s Hospital and the National Hospital, Queen Square, London. He was Consultant Neurologist at Guy’s Hospital, London, from 1975 until his retirement in 2007. His research interests include the cause and treatment of inflammatory neuropathy, especially Guillain-Barré syndrome and chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy. He has been the chief investigator of several randomised controlled trials demonstrating the value of immunotherapy for both these diseases. In 1999 Professor Hughes founded the Cochrane Neuromuscular Review Group, remained its Chief Editor until 2008 and still serves on its editorial Board neuromuscular.cochrane.org. He was the President of the international Peripheral Nerve Society and the founding chair of its special interest group the Inflammatory Neuropathy Consortium www.pnsociety.com.

Board member
Gustave Moonen

Gustave Moonen is currently secretary general of the European Neurological Society, www.ensinfo.org. He is professor emeritus of neurology at the University of Liège, Belgium and honorary head of the department of neurology at the centre hospitalier universitaire de Liège. His research interests include developmental neuroscience, neuroimaging and inflammatory diseases of the nervous system. He authored or co-authored 260 papers and 40 book chapters. He is also past-president of the Belgian neurological society

Board member
Patrice Boyer, MD, Ph.D

Patrice Boyer, MD, Ph.D is currently full professor of clinical neurosciences psychopathology and psychiatry at the University of Paris 7- Denis Diderot(France), professor of psychiatry (geographical) at the University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and professor of post graduate studies in the same University.

On a European and international level Pr Boyer is the president of the European Psychiatric Association (EPA) and the chairman of the ECNP networks Initiative (ENI) coordinating 6 research networks in Europe. Prof. Boyer is member of the EPA board and executive committee since June 2000.

On a national level Prof. Boyer is member of the steering committee for the development of the research in clinical neurosciences in the new INSERM-ITMO institute in France (Institut Thématique des Neurosciences, Psychiatrie). He is co-chairman of the Master and Doctorate curses for neurobiology at the Universities of Paris 5 and Paris 7 (France) and he has been the president of the second edition of the French Congress of Psychiatry in Lyon, France (17-20 November 2010). He is now the general co-secretary for this congress.

Prof. Boyer has been trained at the Sainte Anne and Pitié- Salpétrière hospitals in Paris and was previously the research unit director of the schizophrenia Research Unit at the University of Ottawa Institute of Mental Health Research (IMHR), Ontario, Canada.

Pr Boyer has been the founding editor in chief of the journal European Psychiatry and is still member of the editorial board. He was a regional editor for the British Journal of Psychiatry (1989-1999) fostering the collaboration between European Psychiatry and the BJP.

Patrice Boyer is the author of 220 scientific articles (indexation into the «current contents» and «pubmed») of 180 didactic manuscripts and of 20 books.

Board Member
Cyril Höschl

Cyril Höschl is a representative of the European Psychatric Association (EPA), and President of FEAM (Fédération Européenne des Académies de Médecine). Born in Prague, he started his career at the Psychiatric Research Institute (PRI) in Prague. Currently he is a director of Prague Psychiatric Centre and Centre of Neuropsychiatric Studies, and Professor of Psychiatry and Chairman at Charles University in Prague. He is also Professor of Psychiatry at the University of P.J.Safarik in Kosice, Slovakia. His research interests include psychoneuroendocrinology, psychopharmacology and biological psychiatry.

Board member
Marian Joëls

Marian Joëls, President of FENS, studied biology in Amsterdam and obtained her PhD degree in Utrecht with David de Wied. She held postdoctoral positions at the University of Texas and at the Scripps Institute in La Jolla. Between 1991 and 2009 she worked at the University of Amsterdam. In 2009 she moved to Utrecht where she currently is professor in Neuroscience and director of the Rudolf Magnus Institute. Her scientific work focuses on the effect of stress on the morphology and function of neurons, in health and disease. She published around 200 papers. Since 2002 she is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Board member
Audrey Craven

Audrey Craven is the current President of the European Federation of Neurological Associations [EFNA].

She was elected to the EFNA Board as a representative of the European Headache Alliance – an organisation of which she is the founder and current President. In fact, Audrey began her involvement in neurology patient advocacy in 1994 when she founded the Migraine Association of Ireland [MAI].

Nationally, she is the former Chairperson of the Neurological Alliance of Ireland [NAI], where she sat on various Department of Health expert panels to develop Standards of Care, Neurological Strategy, etc. Internationally, she is a former Council Member of the World Headache Alliance [WHA].

Audrey received a “Fabulous Founders” award for volunteering in 2001 – the UN International Year of the Volunteer. In 2004, she received the international Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Award. This prestigious award is given to the woman who has done most to alleviate the burden of headache worldwide. She donated the £10,000 prize to MAI for the development of services in the West of Ireland. 

At a European level, Audrey sat as the Independent Patient-Chair of the European Headache and Migraine Trust International Congress (EHMTIC). In 2008, Audrey officially opened the European Headache and Migraine Trust International Congress and in doing so, became the first ‘patient’ to have such an honour. As President of EFNA, she has worked with the European Commission on its scientific steering committee to plan events for European Month of the Brain 2013. She is also a Board Member of the European Brain Council – and has represented patients on various committees at National and European levels.

She continues to work on a voluntary basis.

Board member
Rebecca Müller

Rebecca Müller, representing GAMIAN-Europe, was born in Zürich and has Belgian and Swiss nationality. She graduated from the University of Ghent, as Master in Art History and Archaeology, finishing with distinction. Rebecca is very experienced in management, general secretarial duties and translation. She is multilingual: German and Dutch at mother tongue level, as well as English, French, Italian and Spanish.

Stuart Hurst

Stuart Hurst is Director, European Government & Public Affairs for Eli Lilly, based in Brussels. Prior to this, Mr. Hurst was International Market Access Director for Nycomed and spent twelve years with Pfizer, with whom he also held a variety of roles in Public Affairs, Sales and Marketing, both in Europe and the UK. Before Pfizer, Stuart worked for Astra and Servier in the pharmaceutical industry, having started his career with Duracell.

Marc Barlow

Marc Barlow was born in Wrexham in North Wales. He attended the University of Wolverhampton and graduated with an honors degree in Biological Sciences. After university, in 1983, he joined the pharmaceutical industry as a sales representative. Marc spent a total of 22 years working in the pharmaceutical industry holding a variety of sales and marketing roles including Global Product Director for neurology and cardiovascular products, Director of Strategic Marketing and Business Development and Sales and Marketing Director. Marc joined GE Healthcare in 2005 initially his as Head of Neurology marketing responsible for the development and delivery of cross business strategies for central nervous system conditions and more recently he has been appointed to run the Disease Strategy group in the Global Marketing organization.

Kristina Dziekan

Kristina Dziekan is Senior Global Reimbursement Director at Medtronic, covering Neuromodulation therapies. Prior to joining Medtronic in 2006, Kristina worked at GlaxoSmithKline also in a reimbursement and global health outcomes function, both from the UK and Asia. Kristina is a trained Economist who started her career with the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) in London and ING Barings in South Africa, conducting economic and political research on sub-Saharan Africa. Kristina holds an MSc in Health Policy, Planning and Financing from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and London School of Economics and an MA in International Relations from The Johns Hopkins University/ SAIS.

Marie-Claire Rettori

Marie-Claire Rettori

After completing a Degree in Pharmacy, a hospital residency, and University Diplomas in Biochemistry and in Medical Pathology, Marie Claire Rettori joined Sevier some 25 years ago.

She spent the first 15 years in the neuropsychiatry department, first as pharmacologist in the preclinical studies of centrally acting agents, then in charge of the development of new drug targets in the neurosciences, such as melatonergic derivatives.

She then moved to the International Training Department to run scientific training sessions for our marketing teams in the subsidiaries around the world, on several Servier drugs in the fields of diabetology, cardiovascular disease, and the neurosciences.

In recent years Marie Claire Rettori has worked in the International Scientific Communications Department of Servier, where she oversees international communications, is in charge of raising awareness of Servier psychotropic drugs, manages Servier’s international grants in the field of psychiatry, and is responsible for relationships with scientific associations.

Executive Director
Nick Deeming

Nick Deeming is Executive Director and joined in April 2013. Nick brings with him a wealth of business and legal experience and he is responsible, working with the President Mary Baker and the Board of EBC, for providing direction to the organisation and developing and implementing its strategy. Nick qualified as a solicitor in the UK and from his early career has worked in business. His mantra is 'finding business solutions without complexity'. He has significant leadership and management experience and has developed international multidisciplinary legal and commercial teams with a focus on harnessing the strength of different cultures. He has specialised in corporate governance of publicly and private owned companies and non-profit board management and he has, through-out his career, been involved in major projects from international litigation, business restructuring to implementing change management and business development projects. 

He is particularly interested in the work and aims of the EBC. He is currently deputy chairman of Worth School, a co-educational Benedictine school with 600 pupils in the South East of England.   

Office Manager
Eveline Sipido

Eveline Sipido is Office Manager for the EBC and Liaison Officer for EFNS, a position which involves close contact with European and other international scientific societies, as well as government institutions and the EC. She is a former Project Coordinator of EFNA. Eveline Sipido is based in the Florence office of the EFNS.

Project Manager
Tadeusz Hawrot

Tadeusz Hawrot is Project Manager for the European Brain Council. He is responsible for encouraging the development of European National Action Groups, as well as National Brain Councils. He is responsible for the national and international dissemination of EBC Studies and projects. He also plays a major role in coordination between European institutions and the EBC.

Board meetings are also attended by observers from important organisations whose mission is relevant to that of the EBC. Currently the EBC has five observers:

Guy Vingerhoets

Guy Vingerhoets represents the Federation of the European Societies of Neuropsychology (ESN). The objects of the federation shall be the furtherance of scientific and professional issues within the field of neuropsychology including cognitive neuropsychology, clinical neuropsychology, behavioural neurology, neuroimaging, and neuropsychological rehabilitation.

Nikolay Gabrovsky

Nikolay Gabrovsky is neurosurgeon, Head of the Department of Neurosurgery at University Hospital "Pirogov", Sofia, Bulgaria and Vice President of the Bulgarian Society of Neurosurgery. Since 2011 he is National Consultant in Neurosurgery. In 2011 he coordinated the first meeting of the EBC in Bulgaria. Actually he is involved in different scientific projects mainly dedicated to gliomas and biobanking.

Kevin Jones represents the European Federation of Associations of Families of People with mental illness (EUFAMI), which was founded in 1992 after a congress, which took place in 1992 in De Haan, Belgium, where carers from all over Europe shared their experiences of helplessness and frustration when living with severe mental illness. They resolved to work together to help both themselves and the people they cared for. EUFAMI is a democratic organisation, registered in Belgium as an international non-profit organisation. EUFAMI have an ongoing commitment to improving care and welfare for people affected by mental illness.

Matilde Leonardi is the EBC-WHO Liaison Officer. A neurologist, paediatrician and child neurologist, she works at the Italian National Neurological Institute (INN) Besta in Milan, where she leads the Neurology, Public Health and Disability Unit. She is responsible for all the INN Besta’s liaison activities with the EU. She is Co-chair of the WHO-FIC Implementation Committee. She coordinates several national and EU projects on neurology, health and disability policy. She is Vice President of the Italian Federation of Neurological Patients Associations (FIAN – Federazione Italiana delle Associazioni Neurologiche).

Roland Pochet

Roland Pochet is Professor of Cell Biology at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. His scientific fields are Cell Biology and Neurosciences. He has been an EMBO predoctoral fellow and a NATO fellow. One of his achievement is the discovery of a new calcium binding protein. He is the General Secretary of the European Calcium Society and of the Belgian Brain Council. His research interest include calcium signalling and cell therapy using neural stem cell and a rat model for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. He aims to promote Science in a higher standard in terms of European value.