Keynote speaker
Kay M. Tye, USA
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, focusing 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, earning 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. Moving to the Salk Institute in 2019, Tye continues to investigate emotional valence and social homeostasis at various levels, 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 roles. She actively promotes engagement with the wider community through outreach programmes and science communication, making a significant impact on the scientific community.
Plenary Speakers
We will again have six Plenary Lectures as part of the scientific programme. Our confirmed speakers so far are:
Lukoye Atwoli, Kenya
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.
Ian Maze, USA
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.
Lucia Valmaggia, United Kingdom
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
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.
