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.

Dr. Scott Griffiths

Psychology researcher at the University of Melbourne

Scott Griffiths is Associate Professor and Principal Research Fellow at the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He leads the Physical Appearance Research Team, which investigates how physical appearance influences people’s lives. His research focuses on body image, weight stigma and appearance-related discrimination, appearance-enhancing substances such as anabolic steroids, cosmetic procedures, eating disorders and muscle dysmorphia. His work has received 14 national and international research awards, including the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science and the Victorian Young Tall Poppy of the Year Award. He has secured approximately $4 million in competitive research funding from different organisations. Alongside his academic research, he develops and delivers interventions, workshops and resources for students, educators, clinicians, policymakers and the wider public.

Dr. Dawn Branley-Bell

Associate Professor of Cyberpsychology, Chartered Psychologist & Past Chair of the British Psychological Society (BPS) Cyberpsychology Section.

Dawn Branley-Bell is an Associate Professor of Cyberpsychology, a chartered psychologist (cPsychol.) and Past Chair of the British Psychological Society (BPS) Cyberpsychology Section. She directs the Psychology and Communication Technology Lab (PaCT Lab) at Northumbria University – one of few university-based dedicated cyberpsychology research and training facilities in the UK – and leads the Remote Healthcare for Eating Distress (RHED) research group.

Dr Branley-Bell specialises in digital health and wellbeing, including remote healthcare support and the impacts of social media. As a former fellow of the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, Washington DC, she worked with data from the Library's Twitter archive to investigate online communication around self-harm and eating disorders. As a Medical Research Foundation fellow, she examined what could be learned from the rapid shift to remote care during the COVID-19 pandemic to inform the future delivery of eating disorder services. Her research also explores food insecurity and its links to eating distress. She is now leading a Medical Research Foundation–funded project aimed at driving a national policy for eating disorders with a specific focus on co-designed recommendations for effective remote delivery.

Prof. Dr. Nadia Micali

Head of Research, Center for Eating and Feeding Disorders Research

Nadia Micali, MD, MRCPsych, PhD, FAED, is Head of Research in Eating Disorders and Head of the Center for Eating and Feeding Disorders Research (CEDaR) at Psychiatric Center Ballerup, part of Copenhagen University Hospitals, Herlev and Gentofte, in the Capital Region of Denmark. She is also Co-Chair of the International Eating Disorder Conference [i don' think we need this if it is under conferencer co-chair]. She trained in Child and adolescent Psychiatry at the Maudsely Hospital with a special focus on Eating Disorders, and completed her PhD at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London. Her international academic and clinical career includes positions at University College London, Great Ormond Street Hospital, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, and the University Hospital Geneva, where she was Head of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Division and Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of geneva, Switzerland. Her research focuses on biological and other risk fcators for eating and feeding disorders, particularly  developmental aspects with a multi-pronged approch based on epidemiology, genetics, treatment development. She is co-Editor in Chief of the European Eating Diroders Review ad  has been active in international research organisations, including the Eating Disorders Research Society and the Academy of Eating Disorders.

Prof. Dr. Eric van Furth

Emeritus Professor of Eating Disorders

Eric van Furth, PhD, FAED, is Emeritus Professor of Eating Disorders at Leiden University Medical Centre and clinical psychologist at GGZ Rivierduinen. He is also a former Chair of the Dutch Academy for Eating Disorders and co-founder of Proud2Bme.nl, an online community for people with eating problems or eating disorders. He studied clinical psychology and developmental psychology at Utrecht University and completed his PhD in 1991 at the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University Hospital Utrecht. His research and clinical work focus on improving lasting recovery for people with eating disorders, including early detection, early intervention, personalised care and the development and evaluation of evidence-based and e-mental health interventions.

Prof. David Nutt 

Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology

David Nutt is Prof of Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London.  He obtained an Open Scholarship in Medicine at Downing College Cambridge then completed his clinical training at Guy’s hospital London. He did his doctorate at the MRC Clinical Pharmacology Unit in Oxford subsequently becoming a University Lecturer and then a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow in psychiatry. Then followed two years as head of the research ward at NIAAA in the USA before he set up the Psychopharmacology unit at Bristol University in 1988, where he later became Prof of Psychopharmacology and Dean of Clinical Medicine before moving to Imperial College London in 2008. He has held presidencies of the EBC, BAP, BNA and ECNP, was chair of the ACMD and founded the charity DrugScience and now chairs PAREA the European association for access to research with psychedelics.

David’s contributions to pharmacology include GABA and noradrenaline receptor function in anxiety disorders, serotonin function in depression, endorphin and dopamine function in addiction and most recently the neuroscience and clinical utility of psychedelics including the most recent one in anorexia nervosa.  He has authored over 600 original research papers, a similar number of reviews/book chapters, eight government reports and 40 books. In 2013 he was awarded the John Maddox Prize from Nature/Sense about Science for standing up for science and in 2017 a Doctor of Laws hon causa from the University of Bath.