More than 350 researchers participated in the Symposium on 13 Sept 2018, and discussed their current research projects in 90 poster presentations, parallel workshops and short talks.
The Volker-Henn Lecture was given by Prof. Wolfram Schultz, University of Cambridge entitled “Dopamine, reward and economic utility”. Prof. Schultz won the Brain Prize 2017 and is renowned for his work on reward processing in the brain and the role of rewards in decision making. In his research, he combines behavioral, neurophysiological and neuroimaging techniques to investigate the neural mechanisms of learning, goal-directed behavior and economic decision making.
ZNZ Best PhD Thesis Award for schizophrenia research
Dr. Vinita Jagannath won the prize for her dissertation “D-amino acid oxidase activator (DAOA/G72) pathways and its role in schizophrenia”. Her work significantly contributed to elucidating the NMDA receptor hypofunction pathway and may help identify new therapeutic targets for the treatment of psychotic diseases in children, adolescents and young adults. Dr. Jagannath carried out her research in the Clinic for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy under the supervision of Prof. Edna Grünblatt and Prof. Susanne Walitza.
Koetser Award
This year’s award of the Betty and David Koetser Foundation went to Prof. Alastair Compston from the University of Cambridge. He was honored for his research into the causes of multiple sclerosis and the discovery of new therapies. In his Koetser Memorial Lecture “Multiple sclerosis: the story of mechanism-based therapeutics”, he presented his latest research projects. These involve exploring the potential role for human stem cells to limit and repair damage to the brain as well as the use of a monoclonal antibody to treat patients and to understand mechanisms of tissue injury that determine the clinical course of the disease.
Program on the ZNZ website