Professor of Psychiatry. From 2009 Head of the Clinical Research Group Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences and research unit Psychiatry and Clinical Psychobiology, Division of Neuroscience, Scientific Institute Ospedale San Raffaele. From 2002 he has been Area Coordinator at the Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Scientific Institute Ospedale San Raffaele; Contract Professor of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Milan, Italy. He combines his research activities with everyday clinical work in the hospital, with university teaching appointments, and with coordination and leadership of research units in the field of psychiatry and clinical neurosciences. His main research interests are within the field of translational and reverse-translational research in psychiatry, including brain imaging and neural correlates of psychiatric diseases and therapeutics, psychiatric genetics, with a particular emphasis on clock genes, chronobiology and chronotherapeutics of mood disorders, developing new treatment techniques based on the administration of environmental stimuli to synchronize the biological clock. Other areas of interest include clinical neuropsychology and animal models of psychiatric diseases.

Professor of Neurology, past President of the European Stroke Organisation (ESO) and Chair of the European Angels Steering Committee, stroke neurologist at the University of Perugia Stroke Unit, Italy. She is currently working for an European Stroke Project “ESO-EAST” “Enhancing and Accelerating Stroke Treatment” which aims to establish a 5-year collaboration with selected physicians from Eastern countries, in order to optimise and implement Stroke Care best practices in these countries and share know-how. She has authored and co-authored more than 200 published papers and book-chapters. She has been involved in 20 multicentre trials serving in various positions including steering committees. She is currently actively involved in international research projects on cervical artery dissections, heart and brain, intracerebral haemorrhage, and acute stroke treatment. She has made primary interest the treatment and prevention of stroke in women and working on stroke guidelines in women, with the aim of uncovering the underlying thought to be associated with fostering stroke in women of all ages. She supervised several masters, residents and MD-theses.

Professor of Epidemiology and Neurology, director of the AUT’s National Institute for Stroke and Applied Neurosciences (NISAN); associate director of the Centre for Neurocomputation and Brain Study at KEDRI at AUT; affiliate professor of the Department of Global Health at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington; president of the International Association on Neurology and Epidemiology; and honorary professor of the Novosibirsk State Medical University, Russia; member of the Advisory Working Group on Stroke for the WHO ICD-11 version. He is on the World Stroke Organization Board of Directors, a member of the Science Leadership Team of the NSC Ageing Well Programme, and principal investigator and member of the management team of Brain Research NZ CoRE. His area of research expertise includes stroke, traumatic brain injury prevention, epidemiology and treatment/rehabilitation. He has authored or co-authored over 500 academic publications. In 2015, he was awarded the Royal Society of New Zealand’s MacDiarmid Medal, for outstanding research in stroke epidemiology and prevention worldwide, and the development of ground-breaking technology in primary stroke prevention using the Stroke Riskometer™ App.