Keynote speaker
Kay M. Tye, USA
KL01 – Neural mechanisms of social homeostasis
Kay M. Tye is an HHMI investigator, Wylie Vale professor at the Salk Institute for biological studies, and a member of the Kavli Institute for brain and mind. She graduated from MIT in 2003 with a degree in brain and cognitive sciences and earned her PhD from UCSF, where her research focused on amygdala plasticity in reward learning. Tye’s postdoctoral work with Karl Deisseroth at Stanford led to the development of pioneering optogenetic techniques.
In 2012, Tye established her laboratory at MIT, where she received the New Innovator Award to study the neural mechanisms of emotional valence. She received the Young Investigator Award in 2016 and the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award in 2017 for her work on social homeostasis. After moving to the Salk Institute in 2019, Tye continues to investigate emotional valence and social homeostasis across multiple levels of analysis, becoming a Blavatnik laureate and HHMI Investigator in 2021.
Dedicated to academic culture, mentorship, and advocacy, Tye has supported under-served populations for over 20 years and has placed numerous trainees in academic and professional positions. She actively promotes engagement with the wider community through outreach programmes and science communication, making a significant contribution to the scientific community.
Ian Maze, USA
PL01 – Protein monoaminylation in the brain: novel mechanisms of neural development, plasticity, and disease
Ian Maze is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and Professor of Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS), where he is Director of the Centre for Neural Epigenome Engineering and leads the Laboratory of Mechanistic Neuroepigenetics. He has made seminal contributions to our understanding of non-canonical, neurotransmission-independent roles for biogenic amines as direct mediators of gene expression and protein signalling in the brain via their ability to directly modify proteins – i.e. monoaminylation. His research focuses on how these (and other) chromatin regulatory phenomena shape neurodevelopment and plasticity of the adult brain to influence motivation and mood. Using integrative approaches in rodents and humans, his work has revealed how neuroepigenetic processes contribute to (mal)adaptive aspects of neural physiology and vulnerabilities to neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders.
Ian carried out his PhD research in neuroscience at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, followed by postdoctoral training at the Rockefeller University before joining ISMMS. He has received numerous awards, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the SfN Jacob P. Waletzky Award, and the Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists (finalist). His work has been featured in top-tier scientific journals, including Nature, Science, Neuron, and Nature Neuroscience.
Lukoye Atwoli, Kenya
PL02 – Title to be announced
Lukoye Atwoli is a leading psychiatrist, currently serving as the Dean of the Aga Khan University Medical College in East Africa, the Deputy Director of the Brain and Mind Institute, AKU, and a practising psychiatrist at the University’s hospital in Nairobi. He has an extensive academic background, including a PhD from the University of Cape Town, focusing on trauma and PTSD in South Africa. As a member of the World Mental Health Surveys Consortium, Prof. Atwoli is widely published, with research interests in trauma, PTSD, the genetics of mental disorders, child and youth mental health, as well as HIV-related mental health.
Lukoye Atwoli holds key leadership roles, including Vice-President of the World Psychiatric Association Section on Epidemiology and Public Health, Chairperson of the Board of the Mathari National Teaching and Referral Hospital in Kenya, and Co-Chair of the Board on Global Health of the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. As a strong mental health advocate, he has influenced policies both in Kenya and internationally, earning him honours such as International Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association (IFAPA), the Moran of the Order of the Burning Spear (M.B.S.), and election to the US National Academy of Medicine (NAM). He is also a member of the Kenya National Academy of Sciences.
Lucia Valmaggia, Australia
PL03 – Virtual reality in youth mental health: evidence, applications and future directions
Professor Lucia Valmaggia is a leading clinical psychologist whose work focuses on youth mental health, early intervention, and the use of immersive technologies in psychological research and practice. She is Professor of clinical psychology in youth mental health at Orygen, Centre for Youth Mental Health, University of Melbourne, and a visiting Professor at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London.
Her research centres on the early detection and prevention of severe mental health difficulties, and on the development of innovative approaches to assessment and treatment using virtual reality technologies. She has pioneered the use of immersive environments to support clinical interventions and to enhance understanding of psychological processes.
At Orygen, she leads the XR Innovation Lab, a multidisciplinary team of clinicians, researchers, and developers working to design modular XR tools that can be used across multiple therapeutic applications. Her clinical work is with young people involved in the criminal justice system.
Professor Valmaggia has been recognised internationally for her contributions to clinical psychology. She received the British Psychological Society’s President’s Award for distinguished contributions to psychological knowledge (2021) and was elected a Fellow of the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (2023).
Frank Winkler, Germany
PL04 – Brain Prize Lecture – Malignant networks in the brain
Professor Frank Winkler is a Managing Senior Physician in the Department of Neurology at the University of Heidelberg and a Group Leader at the German Cancer Research Centre. He studied medicine in Hamburg, Freiburg, and London; specialised in Neurology at LMU Munich; spent a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard; and was appointed to Heidelberg in 2010. Dr Winkler’s work has been published in Nature, Cell, Nature Medicine, and Cancer Cell. In 2022 he received the German Cancer Award, in 2024 the BIAL Award for Biomedicine, and in 2025 the Brain Prize — the world’s largest prize for neuroscience and neuromedicine. His work focuses on the interaction between the nervous system and cancer, pioneering the field of cancer neuroscience and launching investigator-initiated trial concepts.
The Brain Prize is an international distinction that honours exceptionally original and groundbreaking contributions across the full spectrum of brain research, from fundamental neuroscience to applied clinical studies. Since its establishment in 2011, the prize has been awarded to 49 scientists representing 11 different countries. Click for more information.
Dana Small, Canada
PL06 – What is for dinner? Diet and brain function
Dana M. Small is a Professor and Canada Excellence Research Chair in Brain and Metabolism at McGill University. Professor Small received graduate degrees in neuroscience and in clinical psychology from McGill University in 2001. She established her lab at Yale University in 2003 and remained on faculty there until 2025. Professor Small’s research focuses on understanding how sensory, metabolic and neural signals are integrated to optimize behaviour and metabolism. Her work combines neuroimaging with metabolic, psychophysical and neuropsychological methods in humans. She also has long-standing collaborations with colleagues working in animal models to support translational/reverse translation investigation. Her work has been recognized by international awards including the Alan Epstein Award from the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behaviour, the Moskowitz-Jacobs Award and the Ajinomoto Award from the Association for Chemoreception Sciences. She served as Board Member for the National Academy of Sciences Board on Behavioural, Cognitive and Sensory Science (2014-2020), Divisional Director of Nutritional Psychiatry at Yale (2018-2022), Program Chair (2016-2018) and President (2022-2023) of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behaviour.
