Professor Anna Falk is a molecular biologist with a master’s degree from Umeå University, Sweden and a PhD from Karolinska Institutet in neural stem cells and adult neurogenesis. After her PhD, she went to the University of Cambridge (UK) for a postdoc on human iPSC and neural differentiation. In 2012, Prof. Falk started her research group at Karolinska Institutet and founded the iPS core facility. In 2021, she was recruited for a Professorship at Lund University to build up a group with two major lines of research: the use of reprogramming and iPSCs to create cellular models in 2D and 3D of the human brain to study neural development in healthy control, CRISPR edited and patients’ iPSCs, and the development of novel cell therapies for the brain and spinal cord using iPSC derived cellular products.

Martin Giurfa is a French-Argentinean Exceptional-Class Professor of neurosciences at the University Paul Sabatier of Toulouse, France. He obtained a PhD in neurosciences from the University of Buenos Aires (AR) in 1990. After spending 11 years in Berlin, Germany, he became an associate professor at the Free University of Berlin. In 2021,  Dr Giurfa moved to Toulouse, France, where he became a full professor of neurosciences and founded the Research Center on Animal Cognition, a research institute of the CNRS (French Research Council). He directed the institute from its creation until 2017.      

He is currently a senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France (French Professorial Academy of Sciences) and a member of the German Academy of Sciences and the Royal Belgian Academy of Sciences. He has received the CNRS Silver Medal and several international awards for his research. 

Dr Giurfa’s research focuses on perceptual phenomena, learning and memory in insects (mainly honey bees), from behaviour to molecules. He has brought a cognitive dimension to studies on honey bee learning and memory as his work revealed bees under a new light, given their remarkable cognitive faculties. He holds an ERC Advanced Grant for his work on the neural basis of insect cognition.

Prof. Dr Ileana Hanganu-Opatz received a diploma in Biology and Biochemistry from the University of Bucharest, Romania (1994-1998). In 2002, she completed her PhD on the developmental mechanisms of cortical wiring at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany. Currently, Prof. Dr Hanganu-Opatz is the Director of the Institute of Developmental Neurophysiology at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany. Her research, supported by the German Research Foundation and ERC, aims to elucidate how neuronal activity controls brain development and later behavioural performance in health and psychiatric disorders. Prof. Dr Hanganu-Opatz has has been involved with FENS in multiple functions, as a member of the FENS Committee of Higher Education and Training Committee (CHET) (2016-2020), as a member of the FENS-Kavli Network of Excellence (FKNE) since 2015 and as a symposia speaker and chair at the FENS Forum 2016, 2018, and 2022.

Balázs Hangya is the head of the Lendület Laboratory of Systems Neuroscience in the Institute of Experimental Medicine, Budapest, Hungary. He was trained as a medical doctor at Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary and received his MD degree in 2006. In parallel he was also trained as a mathematician and received a master’s degree in Probability Theory and Statistics from Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary, in 2007. He joined the laboratory of Tamas Freund at the Institute of Experimental Medicine, Budapest, where he worked on the neural mechanisms of hippocampal and neocortical oscillations. He received his PhD in Neuroscience in 2010 from the Janos Szentagothai Doctoral School of Semmelweis University.  After his PhD, Hangya spent four and a half years in the United States as a postdoctoral researcher, first as a Swartz Fellow and then as a Marie Curie Fellow. He joined the Kepecs lab at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he studied the role of the basal forebrain cholinergic system in attention and learning. The Lendület Award from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences allowed him to return to his home country and start his independent lab at the Institute of Experimental Medicine, Budapest, in 2015. His lab is interested in the neuromodulatory control of cognitive functions, including learning and decision-making.

Professor Eloisa Herrera is a Full Professor at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and Principal Investigator at the Neurosciences Institute in Alicante (IN), Spain. Her research group focuses on the molecular mechanisms controlling the formation of neural circuits. Her PhD work focused on Cancer and Aging. Prof. Herrera has contributed to this field with relevant publications as a first author, including PNAS 1998 and EMBO J 1999a, 1999b, 2000. She also worked on Developmental Neurosciences at Columbia University (US) in the group of Prof. Carol Mason. In 2004, she returned to Spain to establish her group.

Since then, Herrera’s group has published original articles in some of the most emblematic journals and has collaborated with many national and international teams. She was awarded with the “Special Mention” for the best doctoral thesis from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), the Career Development Award from the Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP), the Alberto Sols Prize for the best scientific work 2014 (Spain) and an ERC-Consolidator Grant. Prof. Herrera was the Associated Coordinator of the National Agency of Science (AEI) (Neurosciences) from 2015 to 2018 and has been a member of several committees and evaluation panels for different national and international agencies. Her group counts with uninterrupted funding from the AEI since 2004 and other national and international agencies. She has been invited as a speaker to more than 60 national and international scientific meetings and international universities. She was a member of the PhD programme committee at the IN (2006-12) and co-director of a “Cajal Advanced Neuroscience Training Programme” in Bordeaux (France)  in 2018. She is a faculty member of the F1000, director of the Imaging Facility at the IN since 2013 and coordinator of the scientific programme at the Neuroscience Institute since 2020.

Prof. Herrera is organising the Axon2023-Circuits Development and Regeneration meeting in Alicante and is a part of the local programme committee for the next meeting of the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO), taking place in Granada, Spain. She is part of the Editorial Board of Scientific Reports and Molecular Brain journals and usually reviews articles for many top journals. 

Hajime Hirase obtained a PhD in neuroscience from University College London in 1997. He has done postdoctoral training in Prof. Buzsáki’s (Rutgers University) and Prof. Yuste’s (Columbia University) laboratories, where he was engaged in multichannel electrophysiological recording and two-photon microscopy. He became a principal investigator at RIKEN BSI/CBS (Japan, 2004–2018) and conducted research addressing in vivo neuron-astrocyte interactions. He moved to the University of Copenhagen, where he is a professor at the Center for Translational (Denmark, 2019–present). His main research theme is the astrocytic contribution to synaptic plasticity and neuronal circuit functions in the living rodent brain. His recent findings include the enhancement of brain plasticity by astrocytic G protein-coupled receptor activation.

Dr Sigismund Huck studied medicine at the University of Vienna, became Assistant Professor and temporary head of the Department of Neuropharmacology, and was instrumental in the foundation of the Center for Brain research. Dr Huck was visiting Research Assistant Professor at the Department of Pharmacology, NYU Medical Center, visiting research fellow at the Department of Neurophysiology, MPI for Psychiatry Munich Martinsried, and visiting Associate Professor at the Center for Neurobiology & Behavior, CPS Columbia University, New York. He is currently a retired Associate Professor at the Center for Brain Research, Medical University Vienna.

Dr Huck was co-founder and two times President of the Austrian Neuroscience Association. After the foundation of FENS in 1998, he became the first Chair of the FENS Schools Committee. He initiated the joint FENS-IBRO School in Sulejow, Poland, (organised by Leszek Kaczmarek) to become Chair of PENS, the joint FENS-IBRO Program for European Neuroscience Schools (see Aguayo et al., 2005). Dr Huck was FENS Secretary-General from 2012-2014. His current research interests are the properties and function of nicotinic ACh receptors.

Ellen A. Lumpkin is Professor of Cell & Developmental Biology and Physiology, and Investigator in the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.  She is also past chair of SfN’s Program Committee and Director of UC Berkeley’s Inclusive Faculty Mentorship Program.  Lumpkin’s group studies genes, cells and neural signals that trigger the sense of touch in mammals.  Dr. Lumpkin performed PhD training in neuroscience at UT Southwestern Medical Center and The Rockefeller University.  She completed postdoctoral training in physiology & biophysics at the University of Washington, and then started her own lab as an early independence Sandler Fellow at University of California, San Francisco.  

Michela Matteoli is a Full Professor of Pharmacology, Humanitas University; Director of the CNR Institute of Neuroscience; Head of Pharmacology and Brain Pathology lab and Coordinator of the Neuro Center at Humanitas Clinical and Research Hospital, Rozzano, Milano.

Dr Matteoli obtained her PhD from the University of Pisa (IT) and was an EMBO postdoctoral fellow at the Yale School of Medicine and Visiting Scientist at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, US. 

She is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and the Academia Europaea. She is on the International Scientific Advisory Boards of the Institute of Neuroscience and Psychiatry of the Paris-Descartes University, the Center for Integrative Research in Biology, Collège de France, Paris (FR) and the Umberto Veronesi Foundation. She is a member of international evaluating panels, including the Armenise Harvard-Italy Foundation, the LS5 ERC Advanced grants and SNSF starting grants.

She has been awarded with several international grants, including the ERC Advanced Grant in 2022. She was conferred with the Mid Career Mentoring Award by the journal Nature (2013), the Athena Award for scientific merits (2015), the Feltrinelli Award for Physiology, Biochemistry and Pharmacology (2019), the Marcello Sgarlata Prize (2022).  In 2022, she was elected member of the Academia dei Lincei, one of the oldest and most prestigious European scientific institutions. Michela Matteoli’s research focuses on the synapse and how the immune system affects its formation and function. She has published about 170 papers. Her H-index is 62 (Scopus).

 Jean Christophe Poncer is the Director of Research at Inserm and a Deputy Director of the IFM in Paris, where he leads a group focused on the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying drug-resistant epilepsies, with a particular interest in neuronal chloride transporters. His work combines advanced molecular approaches with functional exploration of cortical synapses and circuits using cellular and rodent models, as well as postoperative human brain tissue in vitro. Jean Christophe is also co-director of the C-BRAINS network for neuroscience and cognitive science in the Ile-de-France region.

Vincent Prévot is currently a Senior Research Director at the Inserm (France) and heads the laboratory of “Development and Plasticity of the Neuroendocrine Brain” at the Lille Neuroscience & Cognition research centre in France since 2007. Following his PhD under Jean-Claude Beauvillain, he undertook postdoctoral work at the Oregon National Primate Research Center/Oregon Health & Science University, USA in the laboratory of Sergio R. Ojeda. He then returned to France to take up a tenured Researcher position at the Inserm in 2002 and established an independent research group in Lille, France. 

His current research focuses on Systems Neuroscience and Neuroendocrinology, in particular the brain circuits that control reproduction and metabolism and the neural pathways through which they respond to peripheral information. 

He has served on Inserm’s scientific commissions and the Executive Committees of several learned societies and currently holds the position of President of the International Neuroendocrinology Federation (INF), and of the Belgium FNRS Neuroscience commission (SVS-3) as well as Past-Treasurer of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS).

Ana Cristina Rego is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, Portugal, and a Principal Investigator at the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology (CNC-UC). Rego’s research is focused on understanding neuropathological mechanisms in the early stages of neurodegenerative diseases. She has identified mitochondrial and redox modifications linked to the activation of glutamatergic postsynapses and transcriptional deregulation in Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases. Apart from investigating neuronal mechanisms involving mitochondrial deregulation, her research is also focused on the analysis of targeted neuroprotective strategies.

Ana Cristina Rego is the Vice-President of the Portuguese Brain Council and the President of the Portuguese Society for Neuroscience (SPN).

Tomás Ryan is Associate Professor in the School of Biochemistry and Immunology at Trinity College Dublin and Principal Investigator at the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience. The Ryan Lab investigates the fundamental neurobiology of engram cell ensembles in learning and memory. Tomás originally graduated from Trinity College Dublin in Ireland 2005 with a BA in genetics. 

He completed his PhD in molecular neuroscience under the supervision of Seth Grant at the University of Cambridge and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the UK in 2010. His thesis work was supported by a Wellcome Trust PhD Fellowship. Following a year as Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, he relocated to the USA to work as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the group of Susumu Tonegawa (Nobel Laureate, 1987) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). At MIT,  he was centrally involved in the development of novel genetic methods that allow for the labelling and manipulation of specific memory engrams in the rodent brain. 

He returned to Europe in 2017, to start his independent research group at Trinity College Dublin. His research has been supported by the European Research Council (ERC), Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), the Irish Research Council (IRC), the Jacobs Foundation, the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR). Tomás is a past-Chair of the FENS-Kavli Network of Excellence (2019 – 2021).

Christopher Summerfield trained at UCL, Columbia University and the École normale supérieure, and has been a faculty member at the University of Oxford since 2008. His work is concerned with understanding how humans learn and make decisions. His group studies learning in adults using computer-based tasks and is interested in how humans acquire new concepts or patterns in data and how they use this information to make decisions in novel settings.  A major theme in his work is the simulation of learning processes using computational models, including deep neural networks, that are tasked with similar challenges and the study of human brain activity during learning and decision-making using noninvasive methods such as fMRI and EEG.

Tatjana Tchumatchenko is a computational neuroscientist and professor at the Institute for physiological chemistry, University of Mainz Medical Center, and group leader at the Institute of Experimental Epileptology and Cognition Research, University of Bonn Medical Center. Prof. Tchumatchenko’s group models address the molecular, synaptic, and neuronal mechanisms underlying neuronal circuit computation. How are neural circuit computations controlled by synaptic dynamics? How does activity relate to functional output, and what changes at the level of activity and synaptic dynamics when tasks shift? These are some of the questions Prof. Tchumatchenko aims to address with her research.

Throughout his career, Dr Emre Yaksi developed and used optical, electrophysiological and genetic tools for studying neural computation in small genetically tractable animals, namely fruitflies and zebrafish. The unique combination of these novel technologies enables neuroscientists to design innovative experiments to study neural circuits, which were unthinkable only a few years ago. Together with his team, Dr Yaksi investigates how sensory information is represented in the brain and how it interacts with the internal states of the brain associated with adaptive behaviours. 

Dr Emre Yaksi received his B.Sc. (2001) in Molecular Biology at Middle East Technical University, Ankara-Turkey. He obtained his PhD (2007) at Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, Heidelberg-Germany. He worked as a post-doctoral fellow (2007-2010) at Harvard Medical School, Boston-USA. He was an assistant professor (2010-2015) at Neuroelectronics Flanders at Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. Since 2015, Dr Yaksi has been a professor at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. Since 2022, Dr Yaksi has been an adjunct professor at Koç University Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey.