Keynote Speakers

Talma Hendler, Tel Aviv University, Israel

Dr. Talma Hendler (MD Psychiatry; PhD Neuroscience); full professor in Tel Aviv University (Faculties of Social Science and Medicine); founding director of the Sagol Brain Institute, Tel Aviv Medical Center (https://www.cbf-tlv.com/); a world-class clinical-neuroscience research center, aiming to translate basic science to clinical needs in brain-related medical fields. Hendler’s academic expertise is evident in her >20 years of work on the neural mechanism of emotions in humans with particular focus on; individual difference in emotional expression (e.g. empathy, anger, threat) and the impact of life events on mental health (stress and trauma). Her lab has been a world leader in combining EEG with fMRI and using AI computational approaches to unveil the hidden spatial information in EEG (termed; Electrical Finger Print, EFP). More recently her lab has implemented this new imaging approach in Brain Computer Interface training procedures aimed to prevent stress related psychopathology in combat soldiers and patients with post trauma disorder and chronic pain.

David Linden, University of Maastricht, the Netherlands

David Linden read medicine, classics and philosophy in Germany. He completed a doctorate in functional neuroimaging at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research and trained in psychiatry at Frankfurt University. He held academic appointments at Bangor and Cardiff Universities, UK. In 2017 he took up the post of scientific director of the School for Mental Health and Neuroscience at Maastricht University. Over the last ten years he has developed and evaluated clinical protocols for neurofeedback based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and was the coordinator of the European BRAINTRAIN consortium (www.braintrainproject.eu). He is the author of “The Biology of Psychological Disorders” (2nd edition, 2018), “Brain Control” (2014) and “Neuroimaging and Neurophysiology in Psychiatry” (2016). Publications: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=vSHrbPMAAAAJ.

Amelie Haugg, University of Zurich, Switzerland

Amelie Haugg is a PhD student at the Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Zurich (Switzerland). She received a bachelor’s degree in Cognitive Science from the University of Tübingen (Germany) and a master’s degree in Cognitive Neuroscience from Maastricht University (The Netherlands). She also worked on several research projects at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics (Germany), the University of Western Ontario (Canada), and the University of Vienna (Austria). Her research involves functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) for the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders. Currently, she is working on the development of new methods for real-time fMRI neurofeedback and on applying them as a therapeutic tool in the field of addiction.

Sylvain Baillet, Canada

Sylvain Baillet is Professor of Neurology & Neurosurgery, Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science at the Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, and Tier-1 Canada Research Chair in Neural Dynamics of Brain Systems. His main research contributions are in brain imaging methods and multimodal, quantitative electrophysiology, with emphasis on magnetoencephalography (MEG) for time-resolved brain imaging. These advances also applied to EEG – a technique widely used in research, clinics and wearable devices. Through international collaborations, he leads impactful open-source software developments (Brainstorm: 25,300 user accounts), efforts for data harmonization (MEG-BIDS) and data sharing (the Open MEG Archive/OMEGA). Sylvain trained 130 students who produced 300 publications. He obtained a total of $34M in research funding in his career so far. As program leader, Sylvain founded 2 MEG core units in Canada and the US; he was Director of the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre (MNI, 2013-17) and is now the Associate Dean for Research of McGill’s Faculty of Medicine, the top research-intensive medical school in Canada. https://www.mcgill.ca/neuro/sylvain-baillet-phd