Marta Di Forti Named the 2025 Translational Research Awardee
Dr Marta Di Forti is a Professor of Drugs, Genes and Psychosis at the Dept of Social, Developmental and Genetic Research, KCL. She leads the first Cannabis Clinic for patients with Psychotic disorders in UK. In 2021 she awarded the Royal College of Psychiatrist Researcher of the year prize. In 2020 she was granted a MRC Senior Research Fellowship to expand her research in the role of cannabis use in psychosis and its underlying biology. Her MRC SRF employes tecnologies like Virtual Reality, genetic data, DNA Methylation data and perhipheral levels of endocannabinoids from human participants in parallel to runnnig an animal model experiment of pubertal exposure to cannabinoids to investigate biological markers of susceptilibty to psychosis among heavy cannabis users.
A Message from Emmanuelle Peters
Professor Marta Di Forti is internationally renowned as an expert in cannabis use and psychosis and is the first author of 3 of the 5 most frequently cited research papers on this topic, spanning clinical outcomes, epidemiology, molecular genetics, and epigenetics. In 2023 she was awarded the prestigious Royal College of Psychiatrists Prize for the Academic Psychiatrist of the Year for her outstanding work in this area. Professor Di Forti works in an Early Intervention Unit in London where she established Europe’s first dedicated clinic for young people with cannabis-induced psychosis who use cannabis. The results are surprisingly good and the Clinic has attracted widespread interest. In 2016 she was awarded the “Kindness and Caring” Award of her local psychiatric services, the only occasion in which this has been awarded to a psychiatrist. Her work has had an important influence on public discussion on the role of cannabis in society. It has been quoted by the US Surgeon General, and in the UK and European Parliaments. She has been interviewed by mainstream media in UK, Europe, and US; TV, newspapers, as well as social media. It is truly translational!
Oliver Howes Named the 2025 Translational Research Awardee
Oliver Howes is Professor of Molecular Psychiatry at King’s and Imperial Colleges, London and Head of the Department of Psychosis Studies. He is a Consultant Psychiatrist at The Maudsley Hospital, where he runs a clinical service for people with psychosis. His past industry experience includes a period as Vice President for Translational Neuropsychiatry at Lundbeck A/v.
His research interests centre on trying to understand what underlies mental illnesses and to develop better treatments for them. This includes the role of dopamine, GABA, glutamate, and the immune systems. He has published over 400 scientific papers and some of these have even been read.
His work has been recognised through a number of awards including the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology Award for Translational Research (2022), Royal College of Psychiatrists Researcher of the Year Award (2017), Schizophrenia International Research Society Rising Star Award (2013), European Psychiatric Association Biological Psychiatry Prize (2012), and the Royal Society of Medicine Psychiatry Prize (2010). Web of Science named him as one of the most influential researchers in the world over the last decade. He was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2020.
Other career highlights include working as a potato scrubber on a farm. He spends his spare time searching for the world’s best ice-cream and trying to make kimchi.
