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• APA/AstraZeneca Young Minds in Psychiatry International Award
• Past Winners of AstraZeneca Young Minds International Award
• AstraZeneca Young Minds 2007 Winners

AstraZeneca Young Minds 2007 Winners

International/Bipolar Disorder Category:

Winner: Yantao Ma, MD
Institution: Institute of Mental Health Peking University
Beijing, P.R.China

Title of Winning Proposal: Quetiapine Maintenance Monotherapy in Early Onset Chinese Adults with Bipolar Spectrum Disorders

Dr. Yantao Ma is a staff psychiatrist and lecturer at the Institute of Mental Health, Peking University. Her research interest is in pharmacotherapy in bipolar disorder and related cross-cultural study, in particular in the intervention strategy of bipolar depression and the cultural meaning of depressive symptoms among different ethical group. Her current projects include the cross-intervention for bipolar disorder and the illness perception of unipolar and bipolar depression.

International/Bipolar Disorder Category:

Winner: Florian D. Zepf, MD
Institution: J.W. Goethe University
Frankfurt, Germany

Title of Winning Proposal: Serotonergic Functioning in CBCL-Pediatric Bipolar Disorder Profiled Patients: Combining the Rapid Tryptophan Depletion Technique with fMRI to Investigate the Neurobiological Correlates of Disinhibited Behavior and 5-HT Related Effects.

Florian Daniel Zepf received his medical degree at J.W. Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, where he is currently enrolled as a registrar in training at the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy.  Current research interests include pediatric bipolar disorder, aggressive behavior, attention-deficit/hyperactivity-disorder (ADHD), eating disorders and epidemiology. Past research investigated the effects of serotonergic functioning on aggression in ADHD. Winning the Young Minds in Psychiatry Award will help him to study the effects of reduced serotonergic functioning in patients with a CBCL-profile for pediatric bipolar disorder, and to investigate using fMRI-techniques which brain areas are involved in behavioural inhibition with respect to serotonergic neurotransmission.

International/Schizophrenia Disorder Category:

Winner: Alfredo Bellon, M.D., Ph.D.
Institution: National Institute of Health and Research
Paris, France

Title of Winning Proposal: DISC-1 Gene and Protein Role in Neurite-like Process Formation in Fibroblasts of patients with Schizophrenia

Dr. Alfredo Bellon received his undergraduate education in philosophy from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. From this same University he obtained his PhD in neuroscience and his medical degree graduating with honors in the top ten percent of his class.  He was trained in psychiatry at the Menninger Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Science, Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. His latest manuscript delineates a hypothesis for a potential etiological factor for schizophrenia which will be tested by assessing skin fibroblasts from patients with this enigmatic illness.

International/Schizophrenia Disorder Category:

Winner: Jung-Seok Choi, M.D.
Institution: Seoul National University Hospital
Seoul, Republic of Korea

Title of Winning Proposal: Neural Connectivity of Spatial Working Memory in Ultra-high Risk Subjects for Schizophrenia: Combinational Approach of fMRI and DTI

Dr. Choi received a medical degree from Seoul National University College of Medicine, Korea in 1999, where he obtained a master’s degree in 2004. At present, he is in a PhD course in psychiatry at Seoul National University College of Medicine. Dr. Choi’s major research interest is brain imaging studies on obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia and ultra-/genetic-high risk subjects for schizophrenia. He has been investigating endophenotypes and neural connectivity implicated in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. For research in this field, it is necessary to integrate multi-modal techniques, such as EEG, MRI, DTI and fMRI. The APA/AstraZeneca Young Minds in Psychiatry Award will support his investigations on neural connectivity of spatial working memory in high risk individuals for schizophrenia using a multi-modal approach.

International/Schizophrenia Disorder Category:

Winner: Renata Schoeman, MBChB, MSocSc, FCPsych, MMed (Psych)
Institution: University of Stellenbosch
Cape Town, South Africa

Title of Winning Proposal: A Prospective Study of Cognitive Deficits in First-Episode Psychosis

Renata Schoeman (MBChB, MSocSc, MMed, FC Psych) is a Research Fellow/Consultant Psychiatrist at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa. She has done research in Social Anxiety Disorder and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, has published in various journals and presented at local and international congresses. She also attended training courses at Harvard University and the Institute of Psychiatry, London. She is currently busy with her PhD.  She currently researches neurocognitive aspects as a predictor of outcome in a longitudinal study of first episode psychosis, investigating relationships between cognitive deficits and psychopathology, brain morphology, brain function, genetic markers and treatment outcome, as well as the relationship between subjective and objective cognitive impairment.

United States/Bipolar Disorder Category:

Winner: Brady Case, MD
Institution: New York University School of Medicine
New York, NY, USA

Title of Winning Proposal: Treatment Practices, Continuity of Care, and Health Service Outcomes for New Bipolar Episodes in Youth.

Dr. Case studies community treatment practices and outcomes for youth diagnosed with severe mental disorders.  He will use the Young Minds award to examine initial treatment patterns, continuity of care, and service use outcomes of pharmacologic and psychosocial treatments for low income children and adolescents diagnosed with bipolar disorder in US community settings.  Brady is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School. He completed psychiatry residency and clinical research training at New York University, where he is an Assistant Professor, and is currently training in child and adolescent psychiatry at Brown Medical School.

United States/Schizophrenia Disorder Category:

Winner: Daniel H. Wolf, M.D., Ph.D.
Institution: University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA, USA

Title of Winning Proposal: Ventral Striatum Hypofunction: Relationship to Negative Symptoms in Schizophrenia Patients and Family

Dr. Daniel Wolf is currently completing a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Neuropsychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. His research goal is to investigate the pathophysiology of emotional, motivational, and cognitive deficits in schizophrenia and use this knowledge to develop better diagnostic tools and treatments.  His Young Minds study will use functional MRI data and behavioral measures of motivation and reward sensitivity to examine symptoms of avolition and anhedonia in patients with schizophrenia and their first-degree family members.