Early Career Advisory Panel (ECAP)

Six years ago ECNP founded the Early Career Advisory Panel (ECAP) to advise on the needs of future members of the College, to give input on development of Early Career Scientist activities and initiatives, to help generate activities for Early Career Scientists and clinicians, and to receive feedback on current activities.

The committee is composed of graduates of the ECNP Workshop for Early Career Scientists in Europe and the ECNP Workshop on Clinical Research Methods (to represent respectively the pre-clinical and clinical multidisciplinary compound) and members of the ECNP Schools (to represent the clinical multidisciplinary compound), being the Neuropsychopharmacology School or the Child and Adolescent School.

To keep the group as close to our early career members as possible, the panel is refreshed regularly.

Achievements
In recent years ECAP has been involved in the development of several Early Career Scientist activities during the ECNP Congress:

• The off-site Science-on-the-Rocks evening
• Career Development Sessions
• Match-making Translational Speed-dating Session (MYTM)
• Early Career Scientist corner at the Welcome Reception

The ECAP also helped developing the ECNP Research Internship Project (ERI) and the Translational early career internship project, in this sub-project of the ERI selected couples that participated in the MYTM speed-dating session at the congress receive funding to organise a peer-to-peer translational internship.

Projects
Apart from congress related activities, ECAP has initiated the following projects:

• Podcast series
• ECAP Commentaries in European Neuropsychopharmacology (ENP)
  In this collaboration between ENP and ECAP Early Career Scientists are invited by the editors to write commentaries for selected articles of particular interest to the field.
  Published examples of Early Career Commentaries* in ENP are:
  - Can Gi1 biased 5-HT2A inverse agonists improve the treatment of psychosis? 
  - Microbiota-metabolome interaction in depression: Could it be the new 42?
  - Association between selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and violent crime – could underlying psychopathology be the cause?
   * Full text commentaries only accessible with ScienceDirect subscription

Members

• Aiste Lengvenyte, France chair
• Gitte Moos Knudsen, Denmark, representative Executive Committee
• Sofi Atshemyan, Republic of Armenia
• Christine Fülling, Ireland
• Ilse Graat, The Netherlands
• Kosma Sakrajda, Poland