Executive Officers

Iris Sommer
President

Iris Sommer studied public health in Maastricht and medicine in Amsterdam. Later she obtained her PhD (cum laude) in Utrecht on language in schizophrenia. She trained there as a psychiatrist and learned from Prof Rene Kahn and Prof Jean Paul Selten. She started the Voices Clinic in Utrecht and investigated the cerebral basis of auditory verbal hallucinations. She also assembled a multidisciplinary team to study language as a biomarker for schizophrenia using computational linguistics.

In 2017 she moved to the north of the Netherlands to become Director of the Research Institute Brain and Cognition in UMC Groningen. She started the HAMLETT-OPHELIA cohort to study effects of maintenance medication in 350 FEP patients. She also investigated optimal treatment for women with psychosis and leads several studies to investigate the influence of nutrition and the microbiome on brain health. She now leads a team of some 25 PhD students and 5 postdocs.

In 2021 she was appointed Distinguished Lorentz Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies and in 2022 she won the Huijbregtsen Prize for Science and Society. Together with three European colleagues (Prof Philipp Homan, Prof Wolfram Hinzen and Prof Brita Elvevag) she leads two large projects funded by EU to study how speech and language can be used as a biomarker for psychosis. Iris authored six popular scientific books from which three became best-sellers.

Sophia Frangou
President-Elect

Dr. Sophia Frangou President’s Research Excellence Chair in Brain Health and Associate Head in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia, and Professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

She is an internationally distinguished psychiatrist and neuroscientist whose work has advanced understanding of the neural basis of psychopathology and cognition across the lifespan in both healthy individuals and people with psychosis. Her contributions, which include more than 300 highly cited publications, have helped shape contemporary research in biological psychiatry and neuroimaging.

Her contributions have been recognised through several major honours, including the 2019 Colvin Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Mood Disorders Research from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, the 2020 Educator Award from the Society of Biological Psychiatry, the 2022 George N. Thompson Award, and the 2025 European Psychiatric Association Constance Pascal–Helen Boyle Prize.

Her leadership in the field includes service as President of the Society of Biological Psychiatry (2024-2025) and her role as editor of European Psychiatry and Human Brain Mapping.

Paola Dazzan
Past-President

Prof Paola Dazzan is Professor of Neurobiology of Psychosis, in the Department of Psychosis Studies at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience, King’s College London, and Honorary Consultant Perinatal Psychiatrist, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.

She completed her Medical Degree at the University of Cagliari, Italy and obtained a Fellowship in psychiatry that allowed her to pursue her research interests in the UK. She became a Member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (MRCPsych) in 1998. In 2002, she completed a Master (MSc) in Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London. She trained as a psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital and completed her Ph.D. at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, in 2006. In 2013 she was nominated Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (FRCPsych).

Prof Dazzan’s main area of research interest is neuroimaging and its application to the study of early psychosis and postpartum psychoses. She is internationally known for her work on the relationship between magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data and other biological measures such as neurodevelopmental indices, stress, and reproductive hormones. She has studied these phenomena in the early stages of psychosis and her interest has developed to include the progression of brain structural changes over the course of psychoses and the biological substrate of postpartum psychoses. She has a strong interest in understanding how antipsychotic drugs affect brain structure and function, and in exploring how to use imaging to predict response to treatment and clinical outcome. Her work has been extensively published in high impact papers, with more than 200 publications and an h-index of 61 (Google Scholar), and has been recognised by several prestigious International Awards, including the 2014 Academic Researcher of the Year Award from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and Honorary Membership of the American Psychiatric Association in recognition of her contribution to psychiatry. In 2017 she received the Guy’s, King’s and St Thomas’s Award for “Outstanding Contribution to Student Experience”, for her work as Lead of Psychiatry teaching in the Medical School.

She has a strong interest in addressing gender inequality and promoting diversity in the academic environment, and until recently was the Co-Chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Team of the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, the group that produced the application for the Athena Silver Award obtained by the Faculty. She is a member of the Executive Committees of the Academic and the Perinatal Faculties of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and of the Board of Directors of the Schizophrenia International Research Society. In November 2017 she was appointed Vice Dean International for the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience.

Sohee Park
Secretary

Romina Mizrahi
Treasurer

Dr. Romina Mizrahi obtained her M.D. degree from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1998, and her Ph.D. in 2007 from the University of Toronto.

Dr. Mizrahi seeks to understand early molecular changes in the brain of youth with psychosis and addictions with the hope to identify novel targets for prevention, intervention and treatment. Dr. Mizrahi has received numerous funds from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, National Institute of Mental Health, and numerous foundations including the Brain and Behaviour Research foundation since she became an independent investigator in 2007. Dr. Mizrahi’s hopes to advance our understanding of how the brain functions in-vivo, in particular to understand the contribution of stress and drug use in youth. Dr. Mizrahi’s uses molecular imaging techniques such as Positron Emission Tomography (PET) to study the pathophysiology of schizophrenia, the clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis and addiction, in particular cannabis use.

Dr. Mizrahi is professor at the McGill Department of Psychiatry, with a significant international track record (H index 63, i10 index: 130), international publications (>160 manuscripts in top tier journals and >130 abstracts); proven experience in strategic establishment and management of a unique and successful research center with international reputation and continued funding (>11.5 millions as PI, >65 millions in collaboration). Dr. Mizrahi received the prestigious ACNP Joel Elkes award, USA, a distinction she holds as the first ever female Canadian recipient highlighting worldwide outstanding clinical contributions in the field  of neuropsychopharmacology. More recently, her work has been highlighted by CIHR’s impact stories https://cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/54288.html , Health Research in action describing the societal implications of her research work and by CINP 2026 Brain Health Clinical Research award (https://www.cinp.org/research-awards ).

Dr. Mizrahi’s major contributions involve first in-vivo human studies evaluating dopamine response to stress in CHR, first episode psychosis (FEP) and cannabis users. Dr. Mizrahi performed the first in-vivo human and patient PET studies of [11C](+)PHNO, [18F]FEPPA, [11C]CURB, [¹¹C]SL25.1188 and [11C]NOP to image dopamine, neuroinflammation, endocannabinoid, Monoamine oxidase B and nociceptin expression, respectively in psychosis and cannabis use. Dr. Mizrahi’s publications (>125) are published in top tier journals like JAMA psychiatry, Brain, Molecular Psychiatry, Biological Psychiatry, NPP, etc. Dr. Mizrahi supports interdisciplinary, national and international collaborations to jointly advance science. Dr. Mizrahi’s commitment to promote mental health is represented by significant participation in the media (newspapers, interviews, radio, TV, etc), including being a Witness at the Canadian House of Commons standing committee on health related to marijuana use in youth, a research priority worldwide given recent Cannabis legalization across the world.