Past Board Members

Dr Alastair Benbow is Vice President and European Medical Director of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). He is also the company’s media spokesperson on medical/clinical issues. His previous roles within GSK have included Vice President and Head of European Clinical Psychiatry, Vice President for European Government Affairs and Public Policy and Vice President and UK Medical Director.

Mr Rodney Elgie is past President of GAMIAN-Europe. He is Vice President of the European Men's Health Forum, a member of the boards of the International Society for Bipolar Disorders (ISBD), the European Platform for Patients' Organisations, Science and Industry, the Health Coalition Initiative, the General Medical Council’s Patient Reference Group and the Institut des Sciences de la Santé. A lawyer by profession, he became involved in patient advocacy after suffering from clinical depression in 1990.

Prof. Tamás Freund is President of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS), Director of the Institute of Experimental Medicine at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest and Head of its Cellular and Network Neurobiology Department. He is also Chairman of the Neuroscience Department of the Péter Pázmány Catholic University in Budapest. His research interests include the synaptic and molecular organisation, functional architecture and physiology of neuronal circuits in the cerebral cortex.

Helmut Kettenmann is President of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS), head of a research group at the Max Delbrueck Center for Molecular Medicine, Berlin, and Professor for Cellular Neurobiology at the Humboldt University Berlin (Charité). His area of research is the field of neuron-glia interaction. By organizing the first Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) Forum in Berlin in 1998, he created the starting point for FENS.

Dr Jo Lissens is Research Director for Neurological Business at Medtronic Europe in Tolochenaz, Switzerland, and represents the medical device industry on the EBC Board.

Prof. Andrew Maas is Chair of the Residency Programme and Director of Neurological Research at the Department of Neurosurgery attached to Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He is also Chairman of the European Brain Injury Consortium and a member of the Neurotraumatology Committee of the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies.

His research is mainly in the field of neurotraumatology.

Stephan Mittermeyer is Business Development Manager, Pharmaceutical Solutions at BrainLAB AG, Germany. At BrainLAB, he is responsible for the identification of market and technology trends and opportunities, primarily focused on the interface to pharmaceutical/biotech companies. One of his main interests lies in interdisciplinary approaches including hardware, software and pharmaceutical products for direct delivery of therapeutic agents especially to the CNS, as well as knowledge transfer from development into clinical use for such multidisciplinary treatment approaches.

Hans-Jürgen Möller, MD, is Professor of Psychiatry and Chairman of the Psychiatric Department at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Germany. Professor Möller studied medicine at the University of Göttingen and the University of Hamburg in Germany and received his medical degree in 1972. He completed his postgraduate training at the Max-Planck-Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, where he specialised in psychiatry.

Professor Möller’s research interests are in biological psychiatry of schizophrenia and depression, clinical psychopharmacology, psychogeriatrics, and the methodology of clinical research in psychiatry. He is the author or co-author of more than 1000 original papers and reviews, and the author or editor of several books, including several textbooks on psychiatry and psychopharmacology. An editorial board member of several national and international psychiatric journals, Professor Möller is Chief Editor of “The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry” and “European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience”. He also serves as an editor for “Der Nervenarzt” and “Psychopharmakotherapie”. In addition, he is involved in several national and international psychiatric societies, including the World Psychiatric Association, of which he is Chairman of the Section on Pharmacopsychiatry. Among others he served as President of the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry (1997-2001).

Prof. Richard Morris is President of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies, professor of neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh, UK and an adjunct professor of the Norwegian Technical University in Trondheim. He is a member of the Council of the European Dana Alliance for the Brain and has actively promoted the public awareness of science throughout his career. His principal research interest is the neurobiology of learning and memory, but he is also interested in the use of brain imaging techniques.

Prof. Paolo Morselli acts on a pro bono basis as Secretary General of GAMIAN-Europe, of which he was a founding member. He is also a member and former Vice President of the ISBD. His research interests include social and therapeutic aspects of mental disorders and the role of patient advocacy groups in the long-term management of the psychiatric patient. He worked for many years in the pharmaceutical industry.

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.

Dr. Christoph Pedain is Director, R&D Medical Data Enrichment at BrainLAB AG, Germany. At BrainLAB, Christoph heads the research and product development for a variety of medical image analysis technologies, primarily focused on diagnosis and therapy of neurodegenerative diseases as well as brain cancer. Furthermore, he is Secretary-Treasurer of the Society for CNS Interstitial Delivery of Therapeutics. One of Christoph’s main interests lies in the interface between software and pharma/biotech, thereby creating new routes for the delivery of therapeutics to the brain.

David Neale is Senior Director for Neuromodulation for Medtronic and is based in Switzerland. David has worked for Medtronic for a number of years having recently headed regional operations for several Medtronic Product lines. When based in Brazil, he headed ABIMED, the Brazilian medical device association. Prior to Medtronic, he worked for Baxter Healthcare in Latin America.

Prof. Asla Pitkänen is Secretary General of FENS and Professor of Neurobiology at the AI Virtanen Institute for Molecular Sciences at the University of Kuopio, Finland. She is also a Vice Chair of the Finnish Epilepsy Society and a member of the Neurobiology Commission of the International League Against Epilepsy. Her research interests include molecular and cellular mechanisms of epileptogenesis.

Prof. Jan M. van Ree is director of the Rudolf Magnus Institute of Neuroscience and professor of psychopharmacology at the Utrecht University and the University Medical Centre Utrecht, the Netherlands. He is chair of ECNP’s Publication Committee, a founder of the Netherlands Brain Foundation and the Netherlands Decade of the Brain. His research interests include experimental addiction, behavioural pharmacology, social behaviour, neuropeptides and endogenous opioids.

Henning Sass is Past-President of the European Psychiatric Association (EPA) and Medical Director and Chairman of the Board of the Hospital of the University of Technology, RWTH Aachen, Germany. He is a Professor of Psychiatry, a member of the board of the Association of Medical Faculties in Germany, and a consultant to the German Ministry for Science, Education and Technology. His research interests include psychopathology, personality disorders and forensic psychiatry.

Dr Andrew Sleight is the Global Head of Neuroscience Research for Hoffmann-La Roche and is based in Basel, Switzerland. During his career in the pharmaceutical industry he has led discovery teams that have successfully tested molecules in clinical studies in brain diseases (both psychiatric and neurological disorders).

Reijo Salonen is the Senior Vice President of Research and Development and a member of the Executive Management Board of Orion Pharma. Previously, Dr Salonen was Vice President and Worldwide Therapeutic Area Head Neurosciences at Pfizer. A specialist in neurology, he has an MD degree and PhD in Neuroimmunology.