Jean-Antoine Girault MD, PhD (France) is an Inserm Research and since 2012 Director, Laboratory of Excellence “Biology for Psychiatry” (Bio-Psy Labex), Paris. He was the Head of the Institut du Fer à Moulin (Inserm and Sorbonne University) in Paris until September 2020.

His research focuses on the signalling mechanisms involved in the plasticity of the nervous system, in normal and pathological conditions.

Jean-Antoine Girault has published over 200 research articles. He has received numerous awards and honours, including the Brixham Foundation Prize in 2016, the Lamonica Prize for Neurology (French National Academy of Sciences grand prize) in 2013 and an ERC Advanced Research grant in 2010. Member of various professional committees, President of the French Neuroscience Society in 2015-2017, Jean-Antoine Girault also actively contributed to the coordination of neuroscience research and training in Paris region.

Jean-Antoine Girault is the FENS President for 2020-2022.

Dóra Reglodi is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Anatomy at the University of Pecs (Hungary).

Her research focuses on neuroendocrinology and neuroprotection/general cytoprotection. Most of her studies deal with different effects of a neuropeptide, PACAP (pituitary adenylate cyclase activating polypeptide), with focusing on its neuroprotective effects. Her team showed strong antiapoptotic, antiinflammatory and antioxidant effects of PACAP, leading to protection in vitro in different cell cultures and in vivo in models of Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke and retinopathies. PACAP has general cytoprotective effects shown in several other organs. The lack of the neuropeptide, due to the lack of these protective effects, increases vulnerability of animals to different insults and leads to accelerated aging. Dora Reglodi has published over 240 articles and has mentored 22 PhD students so far. She has received numerous awards and honors, including the Life and Science-publication award (2004) and the L`Oreal-UNESCO for Women in Science award (2005).

She was President of the Hungarian Neuroscience Society from 2016 to 2018 and was Chair of the Organisation Committee for the FENS Regional Meeting in 2017.  She is an ALBA Network Ambassador and the FENS Secretary General for 2020-2022.

Harm Krugers obtained his PhD in in 1996 at the Department of Biological Psychiatry of Groningen University, The Netherlands. He performed postdoctoral studies on stress and synaptic plasticity at the University of Amsterdam and on molecular mechanisms underlying memory formation at the University of California (San Diego). He is currently Associate Professor at the Swammerdam Institute of Life Sciences of the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

His research focuses on molecular and cellular mechanisms how individuals adapt to stressful experiences, how this is modified by early life experiences and how this affects mental health. His lab exploits and combines animal behavior (learning, memory, social behaviour) with electrophysiology, biochemistry, pharmacology, molecular biology and cellular imaging. He is also involved in studies to investigate learning, memory and cognition in humans in relation to emotion and ageing.

He serves in many administrative and organisational roles at the University of Amsterdam. In addition, he serves in several (inter)national committees. He is board member of Amsterdam Brain and Cognition, serves as board member of the foundation for interdisciplinary behavioral research (SIGO). He was board secretary of the Dutch NeuroFederation and was treasurer of the European Brain and Behavioral Society (EBBS). He is a strong advocate for increasing public awareness of brain and cognitive research. He has been elected FENS Treasurer for 2021-2023.

Dr Eilís Dowd received her PhD at the University of Edinburgh, after which she completed post-doctoral research at the University of Cambridge, McGill University and Cardiff University. She then returned to her home country of Ireland in September 2005 to take-up a tenured position as Lecturer in Pharmacology at National University of Ireland, Galway.

One of Eilís’ main research interests is in using biomaterials to enhance cell-based therapies for Parkinson’s disease. Her research is this area was the focus of the recent Parkinson’s documentary “Feats of Modest Valour” which won “The Scientist Award” (awarded by AAAS and Science) at the Imagine Science Film Festival in New York, as well as the “Professional Documentary Award” at the Raw Science Film Festival in California. The promise of this approach is also highlighted by the BBC Science Focus magazine article which described it as one of “Five Incredible Advances in Brain Disease Treatment”.

Eilís was President of Neuroscience Ireland, Ireland’s official neuroscience society, from 2017-2019, and President of the Network for European CNS Transplantation and Restoration (NECTAR) from 2014-2018. She currently sits on the Executive Committee of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) and Chairs the FENS Communications Committee. She is also Associate Editor of Neuronal Signaling, Section Editor of the European Journal of Neuroscience, and Editorial Board member at the British Journal of Pharmacology.

Dr Alain Chédotal, received a PhD degree from Pierre & Marie Curie University in Paris and completed his postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley (US). He was recruited at INSERM in 1997 and is currently Research director (DRCE) at the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM) and group leader at the Vision Institute in Paris, France.

His research aims at understanding how cell-cell interactions are regulated by axon guidance molecules during normal development and in pathologies. Most of his studies are conducted in vivo using a variety of mouse models video-microscopy and biochemical methods. In the past few years, he has developed novel molecular and imaging techniques (such as tissue clearing an 3D light sheet microscopy) to study axon guidance and embryology. His team contributes to the human cell atlas project and started to build the first 3D cellular atlas of the developing human embryo.

Alain was elected at the Academia Europaea, the French Academy of Sciences and is a member of the European Dana alliance for Brain Initiatives (EDAB). Alain is Editor at Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience, Section Head at Faculty of 1000, and Editoral board member at Development Growth and Differentiation, Brain and Neuroscience Advances and Developmental Neurobiology.

Professor Irene Tracey is Warden of Merton College, Oxford University, her alma mater and one of the University’s oldest Colleges dating back to 1264; she is also Professor of Anaesthetic Neuroscience and Pro-Vice Chancellor at Oxford. Subsequent to a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard, she was a founding member of the now world-leading Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain (FMRIB – now WIN) and was its director from 2005 until 2015 whilst holding the Nuffield Chair in Anaesthetic Sciences. She was Head of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences prior to taking up her current role.

Over the past 20 years, her multidisciplinary research team has contributed to our understanding of pain perception, pain relief and nociceptive processing within the human central nervous system using advanced neuroimaging techniques and novel paradigm designs. They also investigate the neural basis of altered states of consciousness induced by anaesthetic agents.

Irene serves and has served science through her election to Councils of: International Association for the Study of Pain, British Neuroscience Association, Lundbeck Brain Prize Committee and Council of the Medical Research Council. She was awarded the triennial Patrick Wall Medal (2008) and made an FRCA by the Royal College of Anaesthetists (2009); elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2015); won the Feldberg Foundation Prize (2017) and British Neuroscience Association’s Outstanding Contribution to Neuroscience award (2018). She was recently elected to the Academia Europaea (2020).

Prof. Tracey is the FENS President-elect 2020-2022.

Carmen Sandi is a Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), where she leads the Laboratory of Behavioral Genetics at the Brain Mind Institute, that she directed from 2012-2018. She is co-Director of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research Synapsy and founder and co-President of the Swiss Stress Network.

She studies the impact and mechanisms whereby stress and personality affect brain and behavior, with a focus on motivation and the social domain, and on the contribution of mitochondria and metabolism. Her lab adopts an integrative research program in rodents and humans.

Carmen Sandi has published over 200 research articles. She has received numerous awards and honours, including the Ron de Kloet Prize for Stress Research, Valkhof Chair at Radboud University, Visiting Professor at Rockefeller University and a Distinguished Visiting Scientist Fellowship at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. President of the European Brain and Behavior Society (EBBS), she currently is member of the executive councils of the European Molecular and Cellular Cognition Society (EMCCS) and EBBS, Chair of the ALBA Network, President of the Cajal Advanced Neuroscience Training Programme, and the immediate past-President of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS).

Carlos Ribeiro Carlos Ribeiro is a principal investigator at the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme in Lisbon, Portugal. He was born in Basel, Switzerland and performed his PhD in the lab of Markus Affolter in the Biozentrum of the University of Basel, where he used in vivo imaging to study the molecular and cellular mechanisms used to sculpt the tubular breathing network of the fruit fly. For his postdoc he joined the lab of Barry Dickson at the IMP in Vienna, Austria where he first worked on embryonic axon guidance. Witnessing the power of Drosophila neurogenetics in furthering our understanding of the molecular and cellular basis of behavior, he became interested in decision-making and nutrition in the adult fruit fly. In 2009 he moved to Lisbon to join the newly founded Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme. His lab works at the interface of behavior, metabolism and physiology and studies how nutrients and internal states act at the level of neuronal and physiological systems to generate the correct behavioral decisions needed for the survival and reproduction of organisms.

Carlos Ribeiro was a FENS-Kavli Scholar (2014-2018) and is the Secretary General-elect for 2020-2022.