CONfirmed speakers :

Professor Elsa Fouragnan | University of Plymouth, UK 
Enhancing decision making through Transcranial Ultrasound Stimulation and its clinical translation 
Prof. Elsa Fouragnan is a human neuroscientist specializing in brain circuits underlying decision-making and learning, a UKRI Future Leader Fellow and Head of the Brain Stimulation Unit at the University of Plymouth’s Brain Research Imaging Centre, UK. She leads a renowned research lab focusing on the pioneering use of Transcranial Ultrasound Stimulation (TUS). She primarily uses it to causally map brain functions in healthy individuals and develop therapeutic interventions for psychiatric conditions like OCD and Alcohol Use Disorder. As part of her commitment to advancing the field, she organizes annual workshops to train professionals in TUS and contributes to ITRUSST, a global consortium advancing safe and effective TUS for neuromodulation.

Assistant Professor Nicole Provenza | Baylor College of Medicine, USA
Neuromodulation, neural variability, and mental health
Dr. Nicole Provenza is an assistant professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Baylor College of Medicine studying the neurophysiology underlying cognition and emotion and the effects of neuromodulation on neural activity and behavior. Dr. Provenza completed her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at Brown University, where she focused on identifying neural biomarkers of distress in patients with treatment-resistant obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Her recent work analyzing chronic and continuous intracranial recordings in OCD patients revealed a neural biomarker of clinical response after deep brain stimulation. The Provenza Lab integrates neural activity and deep phenotyping approaches to inform neural signatures underlying real-world functional deficits in cognitive and emotional disorders. This improved understanding will allow us to pioneer the development of bespoke stimulation strategies that more effectively guide brain activity and behavior toward healthy states.

Dr Wan Kai Rui | National Neuroscience Institute, Singapore
Restoring function: the role of spinal cord stimulation in spinal cord injury rehabilitation
Dr Wan Kai Rui is a Neurosurgical Consultant based at the National Neuroscience Institute. Her subspeciality interests are in Functional Neurosurgery, particularly in the realm of invasive and non-invasive forms of neuromodulation, as well as in Neuro-Oncology. She also has a keen interest in harnessing AI applications to deepen understanding and manipulate neural networks to augment and revolutionize the delivery of neurological healthcare and research. In the words of Zadie Smith: “Progress is never permanent… It must always be redoubled, restated and reimagined if it is to survive.”

Dr Robin Cash | University of Melbourne
Targeting dysfunctional circuits using brain stimulation: Precise personalised brain stimulation
Dr Robin Cash is an NHMRC-EL2 funded senior research fellow specialising in neuroimaging and brain stimulation. His work focuses on using neuroscience research to develop personalised, precise and effective brain stimulation therapies for treatment-resistant mental health conditions. His work in this area was described as “ground-breaking” (TICS, 2023) and “provide(ing) the foundation to move the field... to an era of precision medicine” (HBM, 2021). He has been awarded >$4 Million in research funding in recent years. He is the director of the brain stimulation platform at the University of Melbourne.

Dr Philip Mosley | QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute 
Deep brain stimulation and non-ablative focused ultrasound for OCD, from electrodes to soundwaves
Dr Mosley is a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatry, and an award-winning clinician-scientist with appointments at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Queensland Brain Institute and CSIRO. Dr Mosley has been the chief investigator in a study of the neuropsychiatric effects of DBS for Parkinson’s disease, a lead investigator in a clinical trial of DBS for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and anorexia nervosa, as well as a clinical fellow in a neuroimaging study of Alzheimer’s disease. He is currently leading two new clinical trials into the effects of deep brain stimulation and focussed ultrasound stimulation in OCD.

Assistant Professor Katharine Dunlop | University of Toronto
Brain-based subtypes of SSRI response
Dr. Katharine Dunlop is a scientist at the Centre for Depression and Suicide Studies, and the Keenan Research Centre Centre for Biomedical Science at St. Michael’s Hospital. Her lab uses structural and functional neuroimaging to develop biological markers of symptom variability and treatment response. She seeks to leverage biological and symptom heterogeneity to better understand the predictors and mechanisms underlying treatment response in depression and suicidality. A comprehensive understanding of this clinical heterogeneity may lead to individualized treatment approaches and earlier intervention for those who suffering from depression or who have a high suicide risk.

Assistant Professor John Griffiths | University of Toronto, Canada
Brain-based subtypes of SSRI response
Dr. John D. Griffiths is a cognitive and computational neuroscientist with particular research interests in the neurophysiology of brain stimulation. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto and Scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), having completed his graduate and post-doctoral training at the Universities of Cambridge, York, Sydney, and Toronto. Dr. Griffiths leads the Whole-Brain Modelling Group (grifflab.com) at the CAMH Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics, a multi-disciplinary team conducting integrated computational, experimental, and clinical neuroscience research on brain rhythms, brain network organization, and brain stimulation-induced plasticity. Recent work from his group has explored the circuit mechanisms of alpha rhythm generation, the network structure underlying TMS-evoked responses, fMRI and DWI connectivity-based targeting for TMS depression therapy, the physiological basis of anti-correlations in fMRI, parameter estimation techniques for neurophysiological modelling, and the interaction of rTMS-induced plasticity mechanisms with endogenous brain rhythms. This spans both modelling/theory-oriented work and experimental work using EEG, fMRI, DWI, TMS, and fNIRS, in healthy and clinical populations, at the CAMH KCNI EEG Lab, which he co-directs.