Barbara Franke is a Professor of Molecular Psychiatry at Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. She is the head of the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience at Radboud University Medical Center (Radboudumc). She also is a Principal Investigator at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour in Nijmegen. Barbara is one of the internationally leading scientists in the field of biological psychiatry; international collaboration and team science are a strong motivator for her. She leads several international consortia in the field of research into psychiatric conditions and their comorbidity, including the Horizon 2020-funded PRIME consortium. She is also a member of the Coordinating Committee of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) and the co-leader of PGC’s ADHD Working Group, a member of the Board of Directors of the International Society for Psychiatric Genetics (ISPG), the founder and leader of the International Multicenter persistent ADHD Collaboration (IMpACT) and the ECNP Network ADHD across the lifespan, and a cofounder of the international ENIGMA Consortium on neuroimaging and brain genetics. She holds honorary professorships at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, and at Aarhus University in Denmark.

Barbara is a molecular biologist and geneticist by training. She studies the biological contribution to neurodevelopmental conditions, especially ADHD, and their mental and somatic comorbidities in children and adults. Beyond gene-finding, she uses complementary approaches (bioinformatics, cell-based and small animal models, and neuroimaging genetics) to map biological pathways from gene to behaviour and disease. It is her goal to make biological information useful for improving the diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment of psychiatric conditions and to contribute to their re-conceptualization.

Professor Jan Buitelaar is leading the research group on neuropsychiatric and developmental disorders, principal investigator at the Radboud University Medical Centre, and affiliated with Karakter Child and Adolescent Psychiatry University Centre. His research in focused on ADHD, autism, and aggression and impulsivity related disorders. He applies an interdisciplinary approach that integrates clinical and phenotypic studies, neuroimaging, cognitive research, genetics, pharmacology and preclinical approaches. He is main applicant of many international and national awarded grants. He published more than 1000 peer-reviewed papers is among the top 1% of most often cited researchers worldwide.

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Alejandro Arias Vásquez is a biologist with a PhD in genetic epidemiology. He is an expert genetic epidemiologist and he created the Brain, Bacteria and Behaviour research group at the Departments of Psychiatry & Human Genetics at Radboudumc, where he leads a team that investigates the role gut bacteria (gut microbiota) plays in human neurodevelopment. He is an expert in the analysis of complex biological data with ample experience in high order statistical analysis. Dr. Arias Vásquez is currently working on the discovery and (functional) characterization of microbiota signals associated with the (functional) variability of multiple neurobiological readouts (e.g. brain structure and function, cognitive and behavioral development and disease risk estimation). His work links genetic and multiple environmental effects with microbial signals and he has a long-standing track record in interdisciplinary, collaborative research, his work includes close collaborations with geneticists, psychiatrists, psychologists, experts in animal work, methodologists and science education and dissemination experts. He has been WP leader in multiple EU funded projects and coordinator of the Eat2beNice (http://eat2benice.eu/; H2020-SFS-38-2016-728018) project. His work also includes the role nutrition (through Nutritional Psychiatry) mediates the genetic and microbial influences the risk of neurodevelopmental diseases.

Dr. Arias Vásquez,  was born in 22.06.1975, he is a Research Group Leader, Departments of Psychiatry & Human Genetics, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands, ORCID ID:  http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4786-0169

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I am Martine Hoogman and I’m currently working as an assistant professor at the department of Psychiatry and Human Genetics of the Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen the Netherlands. I have my own research group which focuses on the positive aspects, strengths and resilience associated with ADHD and ASD. I have been involved in the IMPACT1-NL, IMpACT2-NL and now IMpACT2light-NL studies. These studies were/are aimed at unraveling ADHD in adults by using multidimensional data (imaging, genetics, cognition, behavior, microbiome etc). 

Martine Hoogman has a background in clinical neuropsychology (MSc, University of Amsterdam), and obtained her PhD on the topic of ‘Imaging the effects of ADHD risk genes’ (Radboud University, Medical sciences, 2013).

She currently works as an assistant professor/ junior Principle Investigator (jPI) with a tenure track, at the department of Psychiatry and the department of Cognitive Neurosciences at the Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen. For almost 17 years she has been studying ADHD. She uses behavioral, cognition, brain and genetics studies to advance the field of ADHD.

Her research group focusses on positive aspects of ADHD. She also leads the largest international neuroimaging collaboration on ADHD, ENIGMA-ADHD, and a local study aimed at unraveling both the positive and deficient aspects of ADHD: IMPACT2-NL. She obtained two prestigious Dutch grants, (NWO Veni and Vidi) to study the link between creativity and ADHD (2018), and to study strengths in ADHD (2022). In 2020 she was awarded the ECNP rising star award, and in 2021 the KNAW early career award. Her team won the Dutch Open Science Award 2022 for the co-creation of a project on strengths in ADHD together with the Dutch organisation for people with ADHD. For questions, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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