Professor Celso Arango, M.D. is Head of the Adolescent Unit, Department of Psychiatry, Hospital Gregorio Marañón. He is also Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Maryland, School of Medicine in Baltimore and Consultant to the EMEA and AEM.

Professor Arango is a M.D. and Ph.D. and has a specialist degree in Forensic Psychiatry from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He is an instructor for two undergraduate courses and 22 doctoral courses and thesis director for eight doctoral dissertations. He is the editor of five books and more than 30 book chapters and has authored more than 150 scientific articles published international journals. In addition he has presented more than 200 papers and presentations at international conferences from 1993 to 2008. His research involvement includes participation in 31 research projects, 21 as principal investigator, Coordinator of a Thematic Network of the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII) and Scientific Director of the the Spanish Network in Mental Health (Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Salud Mental, CIBERSAM). 

Professor Arango's memberships include the editorial committees of 10 Spanish and international scientific journals and the Executive Committee of the ECNP. He has 19 awards conferred by Spanish and international scientific societies and the Cross of Civil Merit in Health. In addition, he is the Coordinator of the “European Child and Adolescent Neuropsychopharmacology Network.” He is also Secretary of the Spanish Society of Biological Psychiatry and member of seven other Spanish and international scientific/professional societies.

Professor Arango's  main areas of research included neurobiological correlates of early-onset psychosis disorders, developmental neuropsychopharmacology and psychopharmacology in schizophrenia.

The preliminary topic of Prof. Celso Arango is "Pharmacological treatment of early onset psychoses".
 

Dr. David Coghill MB ChB MD FRCPsych is Senior Lecturer in child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Dundee, Scotland, visiting Professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the Central Institute for Mental Health, Mannheim, Germany and Honorary consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist NHS Tayside.

His main research interests are in ADHD and conduct disorder. His studies range from pharmacogenomics, through neuropsychology and neuropsychopharmacology, to clinical trials, pharmacovigalence and quality of life. He also runs a large clinical team specialising in ADHD, Autism and learning disabilities. He has a particular interest in the development of evidence based care pathways and the rapid translation of research findings into practice.

He is the author of numerous articles in peer reviewed journals and lead author of the Oxford specialist handbook of child and adolescent psychiatry. He is an editor of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. He is also a member of the European Network for Hyperkinetic Disorders (EUNETHYDIS), the European ADHD Guidelines Group and is the chairman of the EUNETHYDIS International Conferences.

The plenary presentation will deal with evidence based treatments in ADHD.
 

James Hudziak, Professor, Departments of Psychiatry, Medicine and Pediatrics
Thomas M. Achenbach Chair in Developmental Psychopathology
Director of The Vermont Center for Children, Youth and Families
University of Vermont, College of Medicine Professor, Genetics of Childhood Behaviour Problems, Biological Psychology, 
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Visiting Professor, Child Psychiatric Genetics,
Sophia Children's Hospital, ErasmusMC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

The preliminary topic of Prof. James Hudziak is  "The new genetics in child psychiatry".

Miri Keren, M.D., Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Lecturer and Head of a two-year course in Infant Psychiatry at the Tel Aviv University School of medicine, Director of the first Infant Mental Health in Israel and director of the national network of Infant mental health units, Senior staff at the Geha Psychiatric Hospital and Consultant at the Schneider Hospital for Children in Israel, Clinical supervisor at the Tel Aviv Baby Home (orphanage for babies). 

Former president of the Israeli WAIMH affiliate, President elect of WAIMH. Member of the advisory board of International advisory editing board of the Infant Mental Health Journal, Editor of the WAIMH official Newsletter, the Signal Main fields of clinical work: attachment theory and disorders, early mother-infant, father-infant interactions, infants of parents with mental illness (especially OCD and borderline personality disorders) triadic assessment and psychotherapies, feeding disorders in infancy, infants at severe psycho-social risk and their brain development, placement in foster care and adoption, PTSD in infancy, infants with severe physical handicaps.

Clinical research and publications about feeding disorders of infancy, DC0-3R diagnoses and dyadic interactive patterns of infants and parents, DC 0-3 diagnoses and family assessment, trichotillomania in infants, follow up of treated infants, preventive intervention with new adoptive parents and infants.
 

James F. Leckman is the Neison Harris Professor of Child Psychiatry, Psychiatry, Psychology and Pediatrics at Yale where he served as the Director of Research for the Yale Child Study Center for more than a quarter century. Dr. Leckman is widely recognized as a master clinician in the evaluation and treatment of Tourette’s syndrome (TS) and early onset obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).  His research on these disorders is multifaceted including phenomenology, nosology, natural history, genetics, neurobiology, immunobiology, as well as the development of novel treatments. Growing out of his interest in OCD, Dr. Leckman has also had a long standing interest in the evolutionary origins of developmental psychopathology and the psychology/neurobiology of early parental behavior.

Dr. Leckman is the author or co-author of over 350 original articles published in peer-reviewed journals, seven books, and 120 book chapters. In 2002, he was identified by American Society for Information, Science and Technology as a “Highly Cited Researcher” in the top half of the top one percent of all publishing researchers of the world's most cited authors in the fields of psychology and psychiatry. In addition, his peers have regularly selected him as one of the Best Doctors in America.

The title of his plenary presentation is: "Understanding Developmental Psychopathology: How Useful Are Evolutionary Accounts? A Focus on Early Parenting and Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs)". In his presentation he will explore the possibility that evolutionary accounts provide the best perspectives on psychopathology as well as normal behavior.
 

Marja Makarow, Ph.D.
Chief Executive, European Science Foundation, Strasbourg
Professor of Applied Biochemistry and Molecular Biology University of Helsinki
 

The preliminary topic of Prof. Marja Makarow is "European science policy for the benefit of medical research".

Prof. Dr. Johan Ormel, (calling name Hans) is full professor of Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology at the University Medical Center Groningen and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Although a late-developer, he is an internationally recognized scientist in the field of psychopathology, especially depression, integrating epidemiological studies with basic science and intervention and clinical studies. His research has focused on the causes and consequences of psychopathology and person-environment interplay.

Before his academic career he worked as a government official in The Hague at the Department of Health. He held visiting professorships at the Australian National University in Canberra (1985), University of Washington in Seattle (1992) (Department of Psychiatry and Center for Health Studies) and at the Institute of Psychiatry in London (2000). In 2002 he was for 6 months Fellow-in-Residence at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences of the KNAW (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences).

He received several awards, published over 250 peer-reviewed articles and 45 book chapters. He is one of the most frequently cited Dutch scholars in psychiatry (>9000, h-factor=45, Scopus, March 2009). He established the Groningen Longitudinal Aging Study (GLAS, 1991-2000), the Tracking Adolescents Individual Life Survey (TRAILS, www.trails.nl; since 2002, and the Interdisciplinary Center for Psychiatric Epidemiology (www.icpe.nl). He is involved in World Mental Health (WMH) Survey Initiative led by Drs. Kessler and Ustun.
 

Ms Eija Palosaari holds a doctorate in psychology and practices as a crisis and trauma psychotherapist. She has worked with acute crises and major accidents as well as a developer of the Finnish acute model for nearly two decades. She has participated as a member of the Finnish Red Cross team of psychologists in almost all major accidents in Finland in their acute phase. Her doctorate thesis concentrated on the Estonia ferry disaster. As a psychotherapist she has treated numerous victims of major accidents and their family members. Ms Palosaari has also worked extensively in schools and children’s health care centres as a psychologist in primary health care. 

Her 2007 book Permission to Fall − from Crisis to Life, discussing the phenomena involved in acute crises, received the State Award for Public Information in 2008. In the same year she was chosen as the psychologist of the year in Finland.

Ms Palosaari is well acquainted with the school shooting cases in Finland: the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health (MSAH) requested Ms Palosaari’s assistance in the after-care of the school shootings in Jokela in 2007. She was an after-care coordinator of the acute phase for more than a year. In the Kauhajoki school shootings, she worked as the MSAH appointed specialist in the after-care steering group. Her role also included therapy work and peer support for the victims and their families. Presently, Ms Palosaari works as a psychotherapist, trainer and a crisis specialist. She has recently prepared guidelines for schools on responses to acute crises − by request of the Finnish National Board of Education.

The presentation will deal with Finnish after-care principles in school shooting cases.

Dr. Andre Sourander is Professor in Child Psychiatry at Turku University, Finland and he is faculty member at Division of Epidemiology, Department of  Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York. Since 1999 he has had an affiliation at Tromsö University, Norway. He is principal investigator (PI) or coprincipal investigator (coPI) in several research projects funded. by the Finnish Academy, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR), Norwegian Research Foundation and Finnish research foundations.  He has established several collaborative research projects between research groups in Finland and Columbia University / New York State Psychiatric Institute  including Finnish Prenatal Studies in Autism (FiPS-A), Bipolar Disorder (FiPS-Bip), Schizophrenia (FiPS-S), and “SSRI Exposure During Pregnancy on Developmental Outcomes in Offspring” study (CONTE Center grant, NIMH).

His  research activities include large  birth cohorts studies (The Finnish 1981 Nationwide Birth Cohort Study, Finnish Family Competence Study) followed from early pregnancy and early childhood until adulthood  In these longitudinal studies, Dr. Sourander has  experience linking data from multiple information sources, including Finnish registries, questionnaires from several informants, and clinical interviews. He is the Finnish principal investigator in an ongoing RCT study of web based parent training intervention for four-year old children with oppositional behaviour (Strong Families Finland-Canada). Dr Sourander is coPI in a longitudinal research project  “Violence and Child Rights in Brazil” funded by Norwegian Research Foundation which  investigates children’s exposure to violence in a high risk area.  

Dr. Sourander  has an extensive clinical experience in child and adolescent psychiatry, neuropsychiatry and pediatric neurology. He is trained as a supervisor in family therapy in Finland and Rome (Accademia di Psicoterapia della Familia). He has supervised 10 doctoral thesis (in medicine, criminology, psychology and nursing sciences). He has approximately 150 published, or in press, original research articles in peer reviewed journals.

Eric Taylor is Emeritus Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at King’s College London Institute of Psychiatry; and an honorary consultant at 'The Maudsley'.  He has researched, practised clinically, and taught child neuropsychiatry  since 1971.  His special interests have been in the causes, course and treatment of ADHD, and the research has included longitudinal epidemiology, nosological distinctions within the ADHD spectrum, neuropsychology and neuroimaging, molecular genetics and treatment trials. He chaired the NICE guidelines development group for ADHD; and is also a Trustee of the National Academy of Parenting Practitioners and a Non-Executive Director of the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. His research won the Ruane Prize from NARSAD for severe child psychopathologies and he is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. Publications include more than 200 scientific papers, many chapters and editorials, and several books.