Martin Alda Editor

Dr. Evangelia Eirini Tsermpini is a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratory of Pharmacogenetics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, since September 2021. She obtained her Ph.D. in 2016 from the Department of Pharmacy of the University of Patras, where she worked in the Laboratory of Pharmacogenomics and Personalized Therapy under the supervision of Professor George Patrinos. After her Ph.D., she worked as an academic scholar at the Departments of Medicine and Pharmacy of the University of Patras, and a senior research scientist and group leader at the Laboratory of Pharmacogenomics and Personalized Therapy at the Department of Pharmacy of the University of Patras, until July 2021. She was a visiting scholar at the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics of the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina, a research associate at RIKEN, Genomic Research Center for Integrative Medical Sciences in Japan, as well as at the Department of Neuroscience and Clinical Pharmacology, University of Cagliari, in Italy. Her field of expertise is psychiatric genomics, pharmacogenomics, transcriptomics and epigenomics. Her research is related to identifying genetic biomarkers associated with the development of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, alcohol use disorder and psychiatric drugs response. Other research interests include discovering and assessing miRNAs biomarkers for early diagnosis of schizophrenia and antipsychotic response and investigating leukocyte telomere length in mental disorders. Furthermore, from 2016 and until 2021 she was actively involved in the First European Implementation study, funded by the European Commission. Dr. Tsermpini has received twice the first prize for the high quality of research during her Ph.D. She has published 28 scientific articles, six chapters in international peer-reviewed journals and textbooks, and many abstracts in international conference proceedings. She is a reviewer for several scientific journals and an evaluator in grant evaluation committees. Martin Alda, MD, FRCPC is a Professor of Psychiatry and Killam Chair in Mood Disorders at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. An active clinician, Dr. Alda works as the head of the Mood Disorders Program at the QEII Health Sciences Centre in Halifax. After graduating from the medical school at Charles University in Prague, he trained in psychiatry at Charles University and at the University of Ottawa. Dr. Alda’s work has been at the junction of clinical and basic research, investigating genetic and neurobiological markers of mood disorders and response to treatment. His clinical, genetic, pharmacogenetic, and brain imaging studies are based on carefully characterized prospective clinical samples and their aim is to develop methods of personalized treatment in psychiatry. George Patrinos is Professor of Pharmacogenomics at the University of Patras School of Health Sciences (Department of Pharmacy) in Patras, Greece with Adjunct positions in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and Al-Ain, United Arab Emirates. His research interests span the fields of pharmacogenomics and personalised medicine, focused on psychiatric diseases and hemoglobinopathies, the implementation of genomics into healthcare, particularly for health systems in developing countries, the development of genomic databases and web-based translational tools for personalised medicine and the application of genomics in public health. George Patrinos has published more than 270 scientific papers in peer reviewed journals on topics related to genetics, genomic medicine, pharmacogenomics, molecular diagnostics, and social and economic evaluation for genomic medicine. He is also the editor of several textbooks published by Elsevier/Academic Press, including the renowned textbook "Molecular Diagnostics", published by Elsevier now in its third edition. He serves as Editor-In-Chief and Communicating and Associate Editor for several high impact scientific journals and he is co-organizer of the international meeting series “Golden Helix Conferences”.