Canadian College of
Neuropsychopharmacology

Dr. Benjamin Goldstein is a Professor and Vice Chair of Psychiatry, cross-appointed in Pharmacology, at the University of Toronto. He holds the RBC Investments Chair at CAMH, where he is Scientific Director of the Centre for Youth Bipolar Disorder. Dr. Goldstein’s efforts focus on bipolar disorder in youth. His team seeks to generate insights regarding the association of vascular health with bipolar disorder and brain health in youth, with the goal of informing preventive efforts focusing simultaneously on physical and mental health. Dr. Goldstein has authored over 350 scientific articles, and has received national and international awards for his research

Dr. Warsh is currently an Emeritus Senior Scientist at the Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute and Staff Psychiatrist in the Mood Disorders Clinic CAMH, and Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Emeritus Professor, Institute of Medical Sciences, at the University of Toronto. He was a founding and lifelong member of the CCNP. He has maintained an active career in biological psychiatry and neuropharmacology research on mood disorders since 1974. His research contributions have primarily focused on the molecular pathophysiology of bipolar disorder, spanning the development of quantitative methods for neurotransmitters and psychotropic drugs for translational studies to molecular, cellular, and genetic studies of intracellular signal transduction and calcium dynamics in bipolar disorder. As a former Director of Research at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, he contributed to the development and implementation of the Positron Emission Tomography facility and the establishment of the Neurogenetics Laboratory and the recruitment of its director, Dr. James Kennedy. He has held funding throughout his career from the MRC, Ontario Mental Health Foundation, and the Stanley Research Foundation. He has been the recipient of the Paul Christie and John Dewan awards from the Ontario Mental Health Foundation and a Distinguished Investigator Award from NARSAD for his research on mood disorders. He is currently conducting active research on mood and comorbid disorders through various collaborations in the Brain Health Imaging Centre at CAMH and has embarked with colleagues on neuroimaging and molecular studies of the role of blood brain barrier disruption in the pathophysiology of bipolar disorders

Dr. Lena Palaniyappan is an early intervention psychiatrist with training in neuroimaging and systems neuroscience. His main research interest over the past two decades has been finding effective means of prevention and early intervention for youth onset mental illness, particularly psychotic and affective disorders. His discoveries include: 1) identifying dysfunction of salience processing brain regions as a core mechanism in psychosis, now among the more consistently replicated circuit level findings in the field; 2) pioneering the application of ultra high field MRI (7T) in untreated psychosis to study glutamate and antioxidant neurochemistry; and 3) innovative studies of thought disorder using natural language processing approaches, and establishing a TalkBank for Psychosis. He is ranked as one of the most productive authors globally in schizophrenia research over the past 5 years. As Director of the Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health at the Douglas Research Centre, McGill University, he leads a research programme funded by CIHR, FRQS, the Wellcome Trust (UK), and several philanthropists. He serves as Editor in Chief (Clinical) of the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience. He has trained >40 graduate and postgraduate researchers, several of whom now hold independent faculty positions and prestigious research awards in their own right.

Dr. Corina Nagy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University and a principal investigator at the Douglas Research Centre. Her research examines the molecular and cellular features of the human brain associated with vulnerability to major depressive disorder, with particular emphasis on sex differences. By integrating single cell multiomics, and spatial approaches with human postmortem studies and animal models, her laboratory investigates how these patterns vary across cell types, brain regions, and over time using pseudo longitudinal modeling.

Leah Mayo is the Parker Psychedelics Research Chair and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, as well as a member of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute and the Mathison Centre for Mental Health Research & Education at the University of Calgary. Her research focuses on developing novel pharmacotherapeutic interventions for stress-related mental health disorders, such as substance use disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder, with a particular focus on cannabinoid- and psychedelic-based therapeutic opportunities. The work of her research team – the Psychedelic and Cannabinoid Therapeutics (PaCT) Lab – spans the translational spectrum, encompassing animal models, experimental studies in healthy humans, mechanism-informed clinical trials, and community-partnered research, using an iterative approach that allows for communication between all levels of translation. The ultimate goal is to produce novel interventions that are not only grounded in solid scientific data, but are also aligned with the needs of the communities that will be using them.

• Sara Asgharzadeh - University of Ottawa
• Christian Ramos Jiménez - McGill University
• Haley Vecchiarelli - University of Guelph

• Evan Spangenberg - University of Guelph
• Mikaela Dimick - CAMH
• Yuhan Liu - CAMH