FENS newly-elected leadership

25 August 2022

FENS News, Neuroscience News

FENS is delighted to highlight our newly elected leadership. Voted into office by the FENS Governing Council during the FENS Forum 2022, in Paris, France, they represent the voice of European neuroscience and will help shape the future of the organisation and its activities. Their decisions and overall efforts will have a significant impact on the field and will ensure that the federation is fulfilling its mission by serving the needs of the community in Europe and beyond. 

Prof. Ole Kiehn, FENS President-elect (2022-2024)

“I am excited and happy to be the President-elect for FENS, which is taking on a leading role in neuroscience!” (Prof. Ole Kiehn)

Prof. Ole Kiehn was chosen to be the FENS President-elect (2022-2024). Prof. Kiehn comes from Denmark and is currently Professor of Integrative Neuroscience at the University of Copenhagen and Professor of Neurophysiology at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. He received his MD in 1985 and Dr.Sci. in 1990 from University of Copenhagen and was a postdoc at Cornell University, US. He studies the organisation of neuronal circuits that execute movements. His work has identified key elements of spinal circuitries necessary for producing changes in timing and coordination of locomotion and delineated the diversification of brainstem circuits involved in the episodic expression or context-dependent selection of locomotor behaviour. Kiehn’s work has been recognised with the Schellenberg Prize, Kirsten and Freddy Johansen’s preclinical prize, The Brain Prize (2022), Torsten and Ragnar Söderberg’s Professorship, a distinguished professorship award at KI, ERC advanced grants. He is an elected member of EMBO, the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, Academia Europea, the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet (since 2008) and the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine (2014-2019).

Dr Panayiota Poirazi, FENS Secretary General-elect (2022-2024)

“I am deeply honoured to have been elected as Secretary General of FENS, the largest Neuroscience organisation in Europe! As an alumna of the FENS-Kavli Network, I am especially thrilled for the opportunity to further strengthen the role of FENS in promoting, defending and shaping the future of Neuroscience in Europe and beyond.” (Dr Panayiota Poirazi)

Dr Panayiota Poirazi is based in Greece and is the Research Director and Head of the Dendrites Lab at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB) of the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH). She has a Bachelor in Mathematics from the University of Cyprus, and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, USA. She is interested in understanding how dendrites contribute to complex brain functions and the use of computational modelling approaches, often in conjunction with experiments, to answer this question. Her work has significantly advanced our understanding of how single neurons compute, by revealing the power of dendrites in solving difficult problems. She received numerous awards for her academic achievements, including an Einstein Foundation fellowship, the Alexander von Humboldt Wilhelm Bessel Research Award, an ERC Starting Grant, and an EMBO YIP award, among others. She is a member of EMBO, a founding member of the Association of ERC Grantees, and was the first Chair of the FENS-Kavli Network of excellence.   

Assoc. Prof. Aniko Korosi, FENS Treasurer-elect (2023-2025)

“I am excited to be the FENS Treasurer-elect and thrilled about the opportunity to contribute to the development of the science community. Also, it is an honour to help shape FENS, while it continues to grow and reach audiences from Europe and beyond that share one passion: Neuroscience!” (Assoc. Prof. Aniko Korosi)

Assoc. Prof. Aniko Korosi is based in The Netherlands where she is an Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). She pursued her postdoctoral studies at the University of California Irvine and in 2010 she started her research group, “Stress Inflammation and Nutrition”, at the UvA. Her research focuses on how early-life adversity shapes an individual’s mental health and cognitive function life long and the mechanisms underlying the early-life stress increased risk to develop psychopathologies like depression and Alzheimer’s disease. She is particularly interested in the role of neuroinflammation (microglia-astrocytes), metabolic signals, nutrients and their interaction in this context. Her work encompasses pre-clinical work using an established mouse model of chronic early-life stress and clinical work and she is interested in developing peripheral (e.g. nutritional) interventions to prevent and/or reverse the lasting consequences of early-life stress as well as human studies investigating the effects of stress on breast milk composition.  She has chaired the Dutch Neuroscience meeting 2020/2021, treasurer of EBBS and chair of EBBS 2023.

Prof. Sigismund Huck, Austria, Host Society Committee chair for FENS Forum 2024 in Vienna

“It is an honour and privilege that the Austrian Neuroscience Association, together with our colleagues from the Hungarian Neuroscience Society, will host the 2024 FENS Forum in Vienna, Austria. Be assured that we are determined to make this a pleasant and highly successful meeting.” (Prof. Sigismund Huck)

Prof. Sigismund Huck comes from Austria, where he studied medicine at the University of Vienna. He became an Assistant Professor and temporary Head of the Department of Neuropharmacology, where he was instrumental in the foundation of the Center for Brain Research. Dr Huck was Visiting Research Assistant Professor at the Department of Pharmacology, NYU Medical Center, Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of Neurophysiology, MPI for Psychiatry Munich Martinsried, and Visiting Associate Professor at the Center for Neurobiology & Behavior, CPS Columbia University, New York. He is currently a retired Associate Professor at the Center for Brain Research, Medical University Vienna. Dr Huck was co-founder and two times President of the Austrian Neuroscience Association. After the foundation of FENS in 1998, he became the first Chair of the FENS Schools Committee. He initiated the joint FENS-IBRO School in Sulejow, Poland (organised by Leszek Kaczmarek) and became Chair of PENS, the joint FENS-IBRO Program for European Neuroscience Schools. Dr Huck was FENS Secretary General from 2012-2014. His current research interests are the properties and function of nicotinic ACh receptors. 

Dr Liset Menendez de la Prida, Programme Committee chair for FENS Forum 2024 in Vienna

“Thrilled to bring together diverse perspectives to study brain diversity!” (Dr Liset Menendez de la Prida)

Dr Menendez de la Prida graduated in Physics in 1994 and obtained her doctorate at George Mason University, Virginia (US), which allowed her to acquire extensive experience in the study of brain function. After a post-doctorate with Richard Miles in Paris (Salpêtrière Hospital), she started working at the Cajal Institute of the CSIC in 2007. She has been and is the editor of prestigious journals such as the Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Neuroscience Methods, eLife and eNeuro, and holds or has held positions in the American Epilepsy Society, the Spanish Neuroscience Society and the Spanish Epilepsy Society.

Dr Liset Menendez de la Prida is Research Director at the Instituto Cajal in Madrid, Spain. The main goal of her lab is to understand the function of hippocampal and para-hippocampal circuits. She is a leading expert in the study of the basic mechanisms of physiological and pathological forms of oscillations, with an interest in developing novel groundbreaking tools to evaluate brain function.

We would also like to congratulate the following FENS committee members who were also elected by the Governing Council on 8 July 2022.

Communication Committee

Assoc. Prof. Christina Dalla, Greece – Member (2022-2024)

Prof. Spiros Efthimiopoulos, Greece – Member (2022-2024)

Dr Armelle Rancillac, France – Member (2022-2024)

Committee for Higher Education and Training (CHET)

Associate Prof. Karen Doyle (Ireland) – Member (2022-2024)

Asst. Prof. Dirk Schubert (Netherlands) – Member (2022-2024)