Ricardo Taipa
Ricardo Taipa earned his medical degree from Abel Salazar Biomedical Sciences Institute (ICBAS), University of Porto (1997–2003), and was a research fellow at the Life and Health Sciences Institute, University of Minho (2004–2006). He completed his neurology residency at Centro Hospitalar Universitário de Santo António, Porto, and became a Fellow of the European Board of Neurology in 2011. His training included fellowships at Manchester Neuroscience Centre and the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London. He received his PhD from the University of Minho in 2018 with research on neuroinflammation in Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Taipa established Portugal’s first brain bank for neurological research and is currently Director of the Neuropathology Department and Portuguese Brain Bank at Centro Hospitalar Universitário de Santo António in Porto, as well as Associated Professor and researcher (Unit for Multidisciplinary Research in Biomedicine) at ICBAS, focusing on neurodegenerative dementias and transthyretin amyloidosis.
Martin Tik
Martin Tik is Principal Investigator at the Medical University of Vienna. As the leader of the Tik group his mission is to inform brain stimulation therapy choices by translational insights from innovations in TMS & fMRI. Martin and his team are working at the MR Physics Division (Head: Christoph Juchem) of the Center of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering and are involved in collaborative projects with the Departments of Radiology, Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Neurology and multiple other clinics at the Vienna General Hospital, Sunnybrooks Hospital (Toronto), Hong Kong Polytechnic University, University of Melbourne, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and Stanford University. Important research milestones include the innovative chronometric TMS-fMRI approach, dose-dependency and network specificity of online TMS effects, insights into the role of dopamine and dopaminergic pathways in insightful problem solving (Aha moments) and fMRI connectivity changes linked to affective disorders and remission. He is Austrian representative of The European Society for Brain Stimulation (ESBS), member of the Management Commitee in COST Action 18138 - RISE Network in Peripartum Depression Disorder and aims to broaden applications of TMS treatment to new patient populations and importantly tailoring transcranial magnetic stimulation to individual patients needs towards a precision medicine approach to brain stimulation. His main research interests are at the interface of fMRI brain mapping and TMS brain stimulation. Recent Publications include offline rTMS/fMRI studies to reveal network-specific changes after brain stimulation and importantly online TMS/fMRI work demonstrating target enagement during stimulation.
João Jordão
João Jordão is a physics engineer passionate for the field of instrumentation design and driven by a curiosity to understand how things work. His research journey began at the Laboratory for Automation and Systems (IPN-LAS), where he prototyped new sensor-based instruments for health monitoring applications. He later joined the Coimbra Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Translational Research (CIBIT) to work as a research fellow focusing on improving custom optical coherence tomography hardware and control software. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Engineering Physics at CIBIT. His current research focuses on the study of the contralateral retinal neurovascular coupling response in the human retina, with the development of specialized instrumentation and biomedical imaging processing methodologies.
Ana Fortuna
Ana Fortuna (PharmD, PhD) obtained a PhD degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences, specialty of Pharmacology, in 2011, at the Faculty of Pharmacy of University of Coimbra (FFUC). In 2022, she was acknowledged as European Certified Pharmacologist (EuCP) by the Federation of European Pharmacological Societies (EPHAR) and European Association for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (EACPT). She is currently an Associate Professor at FFUC in the area of Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Care, an integrated researcher at the Coimbra Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Translational Research of University of Coimbra (CIBIT) and member of the International Nasal Research Group. Her scientific work has driven translational advances in nose-to-brain drug delivery systems, aiming to enhance treatment options for neurological and psychiatric disorders including epilepsy, Alzheimer's disease, and depression. She has led multidisciplinary preclinical studies incorporating in vitro, ex vivo, in vivo models to investigate the pharmacokinetics and therapeutic efficacy of intranasal formulations, addressing key clinical challenges such as efficient brain targeting, bypassing the blood-brain barrier, and minimizing systemic side effects. In clinical pharmacology, her research group focuses on therapeutic drug monitoring and the development of population pharmacokinetic models to support precision medicine approaches in epilepsy, depression and schizophrenia. This work facilitates individualized treatment regimens and informs clinical decision-making, improving patient outcomes. Fortuna’s work contributes substantially to bridging experimental research with clinical application, creating social and economic value through innovation in drug delivery and personalized pharmacotherapy.
Alexandra Fonseca
Alexandra Fonseca graduated in Biochemistry from the University of Coimbra in 2017. She later completed a Master’s degree in Biochemistry at the same institution in 2019, having been awarded the Merit Scholarship for National Students (2018/2019) by the University of Coimbra. In 2024, she earned her Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences, with a specialization in Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapy, during which she developed and validated a new generation of copper-based radiopharmaceuticals at ICNAS Pharma (Coimbra, Portugal), under the supervision of Professor Antero Abrunhosa. She is currently conducting postdoctoral research at ICNAS. Throughout her Master’s and Ph.D. studies, she acquired extensive technical skills, particularly in the purification of metal radioisotopes produced in a cyclotron, the synthesis of novel peptide-based metal radiopharmaceuticals — focusing on gallium-68, copper-61, and copper-64 — and radiopharmaceutical quality control. Beyond her main research project, she has collaborated on other team projects, resulting in several scientific publications as author and co-author, as well as multiple presentations at international conferences. In 2024, she was also awarded the 1st Edition of the JJ Pedroso Lima Prize.
Albino Maia
Albino J. Oliveira-Maia is a physician-scientist at the Champalimaud Foundation, where he is director of Neuropsychiatry and of the Digital Neurotherapeutics Clinic at the Centre for Restorative Neurotechnology. Albino is also professor of neuroscience and psychiatry at NOVA Medical School, and serves as Vice-President of the Portuguese Society for Psychiatry and Mental Healtha and President of the Ethics Committee at the Portuguese Institute for Addictive Behaviours and Dependence (ICAD, IP). Following a PhD in neuroscience, and while training to become a psychiatrist in Lisbon, Albino also trained at Harvard University on therapeutic use of non-invasive brain stimulation, where he developed interests and expertise on clinical use of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for mood and obsessive-compulsive disorders. This inspired the launch of a non-invasive brain stimulation clinic at the Champalimaud Foundation, and development of a research program where advanced behavioral, physiological and neuroimaging approaches are being used to establish diagnostic and therapeutic biomarkers for these disorders.
Joana Carvalheiro
Joana Carvalheiro is a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Glasgow. Her research investigates the cognitive and neural mechanisms of reward and punishment learning. She has a background in Psychology and Neurobiology and completed her Ph.D. in 2021 at the University of Minho, where she examined how acute stress affects the neurocomputational mechanisms of reinforcement learning. As a postdoctoral researcher at Glasgow, she has combined behavioural paradigms, computational modelling, and simultaneous EEG–fMRI at 3T and 7T systems to study how the brain learns to seek rewards and avoid punishments. She also led the development of a novel 7T EEG–fMRI platform to dissociate, in time and space, the distinct components underlying midbrain reward responses. More recently, Joana as awarded a Wellcome Early-Career Award to establish her independent research programme investigating how punishment and reward systems interact, and their role in addictive behaviours.
Grainne McAlonan
Grainne McAlonan is Professor of Translational Neuroscience and Head of Department, Forensic and Neurodevelopmental Sciences at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London. She is Director of the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre. She studied Medicine at University of Cambridge and Imperial College London and completed a PhD in Behavioural Neuroscience at University of Cambridge. After clinical and research posts in the UK, she worked for over a decade in The University of Hong Kong before returning to King's College London in 2011. She is a Psychiatrist in the National Autism and ADHD Service for adults in South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Her research into neurodevelopmental conditions uses MRI, EEG and pharmacological challenges to examine key neurobiological and neurochemical mechanisms (such as sensory processing), which are upstream of complex clinical presentations. She aims to understand how brain development in early life provides a platform for adult brain health and mental wellbeing; how the brain develops and matures in young people with early onset liver disease; and the brain chemistry of adult neurodevelopmental conditions. Professor McAlonan is a lead investigator within the EU-AIMS-2-TRIALS consortium – a European network hosting the world’s largest grant for autism research. She is responsible for fetal/neonatal/infant brain imaging studies of children with neurodevelopmental conditions and for pharmacology studies in adults with ASD. She also runs the Clinical programme in Brain Health in Gen2020, a multiscale investigation into the brain development of children born during the pandemic.
Catarina Nunes
Catarina Nunes is an Associate Professor in Mathematics at Universidade Aberta, holding a PhD from the University of Sheffield, UK, and an Habilitation in the scientific area of Mathematics (Título de Agregado) from Universidade Aberta. Previously she has worked in several institutions such as the Faculty of Science of University of Porto, the Division of Engineering at King’s College London; Faculty of Medicine of University of Porto. Her research work focus on: Biostatistics; Mathematical and Statistical Modelling; Identification; Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics; Signal Processing; Intelligent Systems (Fuzzy Logic and Neuro-Fuzzy Systems); Data Science. Dr Nunes is a member of the IEEE, EMBS, IARS, RSS, SPE and SPM, and also of the Higher Education Academy (UK). She is an integrated member of CIBIT and a researcher in Clinical Anesthesiology Research Center at Centro Hospitalar e Universitário de Santo António.
Stewart Mostofsky
Dr. Stewart Mostofsky is a pediatric neurologist and is Director of the Center for Neurodevelopmental and Imaging Research at Kennedy Krieger Institute and Professor of Neurology and of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In his research, Dr. Mostofsky integrates innovative behavioral, neuroimaging and neurophysiologic methods to identify mechanisms underlying developmental brain disorders in particular autism and ADHD, with a particular focus on examining how alterations in sensory-motor function can help address clinical heterogeneity in ways that help improve targeted diagnosis and intervention. Dr. Mostofsky’s work with autism has been foundational towards understanding how impairments in praxis, motor imitation and visual-motor integration contribute to challenges with acquiring skills crucial to social-communicative and motor development. Building on this foundation, he is now leveraging novel behavioral (e.g., computer vision and videogame) and neuroimaging (high-density diffuse optical tomography, HD-DOT) methods to develop engaging and scalable methods for improving targeted diagnosis and intervention, including for those who are minimally speaking. Dr. Mostofsky has also helped uncover anomalous patterns of motor function in ADHD. Combining novel neurostimulation (TMS), behavioral and imaging methods, he has helped identify how deficits in motor control contribute to core impulsive/hyperactive and inattentive features of ADHD. Building on this foundation, Dr. Mostofsky has contributed to understanding of how novel movement-based interventions, including mindfulness, can help children with ADHD and related conditions.
