Prof. Dr. Ulrike Schmidt

Professor of Eating Disorders

Ulrike Schmidt is Professor of Eating Disorders at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London and Director of the Centre for Research on Eating and Weight Disorders. She is also a Consultant Psychiatrist at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and leads the Eating Disorders and Obesity Theme within the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre. Her research focuses on the biological and psychological mechanisms underlying eating and weight disorders, as well as prevention, early intervention and innovative treatments. She led the development of MANTRA, a NICE-recommended psychotherapy for anorexia nervosa, and FREED, a multi-award-winning early intervention programme for young people with eating disorders that has been rolled out nationally across England. She also leads the UKRI-funded EDIFY consortium and has pioneered the use of novel brain-directed treatments in eating disorders. In addition, she has contributed to numerous national and international initiatives aimed at improving eating disorder policy and clinical practice and has received several major awards, including the Academy for Eating Disorders Leadership Award for Research.

Prof. Laura Huckins

Professor and Chair of Population Health, University of Bath

Laura Huckins is Professor and Chair of Population Health at the University of Bath. She received her Master's degree in Bioengineering from Imperial College London in 2011, and her PhD in Molecular Biology and Psychiatric Genetics from the University of Cambridge Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in 2015. Her research focuses primarily on studying psychiatric disorders, with an emphasis on eating disorders and PTSD, as well as development and application of multi-omic methods to interpret the functional consequences of GWAS variants. Her lab focuses particularly on Eating Disorders and PTSD; to this end, she is co-chair of the PGC Eating Disorders working group.
 
Dr. Huckins' work has been funded by the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, the Klarman Family Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and the Global Talent Fund.