Governance

Meet The Board

Office Bearers

Prof. David Nutt

Chair

  • David Nutt is currently the Edmond J. Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology and director of the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit in the Division of Brain Sciences.

    After 11+ entry to Bristol Grammar School David was awarded an Open Scholarship to Downing College Cambridge and then completed his medical training at Guy's Hospital London, continuing in neurology to MRCP. After completing his psychiatric training in Oxford, he continued there as a lecturer and then later as a Wellcome Senior Fellow in psychiatry. He then spent two years as Chief of the Section of Clinical Science in the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in NIH, Bethesda, USA. On returning to England in 1988 he set up the Psychopharmacology Unit in Bristol University, an interdisciplinary research grouping spanning the departments of Psychiatry and Pharmacology before moving to Imperial College London in December 2008 where he leads a similar group with a particular focus on brain imaging especially PET.

    David is currently Chair of DrugScience (formally the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD) and President of the European Brain Council. previously he has been President of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP), the British Neuroscience Association (BNA) and the British Association of Psychopharmacology (BAP). In addition he is a Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians and of Psychiatrists and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He is also the UK Director of the European Certificate and Masters in Affective Disorders Courses and a member of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy. He has edited the Journal of Psychopharmacology for over two decades and acts as the psychiatry drugs advisor to the British National Formulary. He has published over 400 original research papers, a similar number of reviews and books chapters, eight government reports on drugs and 27 books.

    Previously he has been a member and then Chair of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD – 1998-2009), a member of the HEFCE/NHS Senior Lecturer Selection Panel and of the MRC Neuroscience Board. Other previous national contributions include serving as the medical expert on the Independent Inquiry into the Misuse of Drugs Act (2000 Runciman report), and membership of the Committee on Safety of Medicines, the Committee on NHS drugs and the Ministry of Defence Science Advisory Board. He was the clinical scientific lead on the 2004/5 UK Government Foresight initiative “Brain science, addiction and drugs” that provided a 25-year vision for this area of science and public policy.

    David broadcasts widely to the general public both on radio and television including BBC science and public affairs programmes on therapeutic as well as illicit drugs, their harms and their classification. He also lecturers widely to the public as well as to the scientific and medical communities; for instance has presented three time at the Cheltenham Science Festival and several times for Café Scientifiques. In 2010 The Times Eureka science magazine included him in the 100 most important figures in British Science, and the only psychiatrist.

  • David via the Imperial College Centre for Psychedelic Research has received research support from COMPASS Pathways, Usona, Filament Health, Beckley Psytech and MAPS for psychedelic drug studies. He is a scientific advisor to Awakn Life Sciences, Alvarius, Algernon and Neural Therapeutics, companies that are researching psychedelic medicines.

Dr. Roxana Albu

Vice-Chair

  • Dr. Roxana Albu is the Chief Scientific Officer at the Association of European Cancer Leagues (ECL) in Brussels, Belgium.

    She holds a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences and is an expert in health data governance. With extensive experience in clinical and translational oncology research, she is a certified Data Protection Officer from Maastricht University and a legal expert in health data regulations.

    Dr. Albu began her career at the Institute of Biochemistry of the Romanian Academy, focusing on glycobiology and melanoma research. She completed her doctoral studies at Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, under Prof. Dr. Ștefan Constantinescu, researching haematological neoplasms. She worked with Prof. Dr. Jean-Pascal Machiels at Saint-Luc University Hospital, contributing to research on cetuximab's effects on epithelial-mesenchymal transition in cancer patients.

    Her roles at the European Organisation For Research And Treatment Of Cancer - EORTC, Brussels, Belgium, included regulatory affairs, clinical trial site activation, data protection, and compliance. She also worked at the Clinical Research Training & Online Courses | ECCRT - ECCRT, Brussels, Belgium and holds a master's degree in management from Solvay Business School.

    Fluent in English, French, Italian, and Romanian, with some knowledge of Dutch, Dr. Albu is dedicated to health education, innovation, improving cancer treatment standards, and patient data protection.

  • None to declare.

Frédéric Destrebecq

Treasurer

  • Frédéric Destrebecq is the Executive Director of the European Brain Council since October 2014.

    Fred holds a Master Degree in Political Science and International Relations from the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium). He also studied at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Paris) and University of Wales College (Cardiff), in the framework of the former EU Socrates exchange programme. Prior to EBC, Fred served the European Union of Medical Specialists (UEMS) as Chief Executive Officer, and previously as Director for European Affairs.

  • TBC

Board Members at Large

Emma Christersson

Board Member

  • Emma Christersson is co-Managing Director of Norrsken Mind, a foundation dedicated to advancing the scientific understanding of psychedelic substances and their potential to improve mental health treatment. Since 2017, Emma has been active in the Nordic psychedelic non-profit sector, previously serving as a board member for Osmond Foundation, Osmond Labs, and Nätverket för Psykedelisk Vetenskap. Emma holds a bachelor’s degree in cognitive neuroscience with a focus on consciousness from the University of Skövde and is a passionate advocate for innovation in mental health care.

  • Previous company affiliation with HumanKindLabs (formerly Osmond Labs), June 2019 to February 2021.

Dr. Henrik Jungaberle

Board Member

  • Dr. sc. hum. Henrik Jungaberle is the Director of the MIND Foundation and a CEO of OVID. He is a researcher, science entrepreneur, and author in public health, psychedelics, and psychotherapy. His focus is on human development from a lifespan and ecology perspective. He investigates integration and integrity in the use of psychoactive substances.

    In 2016 Henrik co-founded the MIND Foundation. Before, he acted as chair of the non-profit FINDER (2013-2020). From 1996-2014 he worked at the Institute of Medical Psychology, University Hospital Heidelberg. Henrik conducted EU- and DFG-financed research projects on salutogenesis and psychoactive substances. With his teams, he builds and teaches different educational programs. REBOUND is a drug education program, the European Prevention Curriculum EUPC is about teaching prevention basics to decision-makers. He is a co-founder of BEYOND EXPERIENCE (psychedelic integration) and a faculty member of APT – a training in psychedelic therapy. Henrik is a researcher in the psilocybin depression study EPIsoDE (Central Institute of Mental Health Mannheim [CIMH] and Charité Universitätsmedizin) which investigates the safety and efficacy of psilocybin in the treatment of depression.

  • TBC

Prof. Geert Dom

Board Member

  • Geert Dom is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Antwerp and Adj.-Medical Director PC Multiversum, Boechout, Belgium. He is involved in teaching and research focusing on addictive disorders and their co-morbidities.

    Prof Dom is the current president of the European Psychiatric Association (EPA) and has held former leadership roles as the president of the European Federation of Addiction Societies (EUFAS) and presidencies of the Belgian and Flemish Psychiatric Associations. 

  • None to declare.

Dr. Joost Breeksema

Board Member

  • Joost Breeksema, MA, PhD is executive director of the Amsterdam-based non-profit OPEN Foundation. One of Europe’s oldest expert organisations on psychedelics, OPEN has been promoting multidisciplinary research into therapeutic applications of psychedelic since 2007. OPEN brings together academics, clinicians, politicians and policymakers, in order to safeguard the safe, ethical, and sustainable integration of psychedelics in healthcare and beyond. To this end, OPEN launched ADEPT: an extensive training program on psychedelic-assisted therapy for licensed healthcare professionals. OPEN also organises workshops, expert meetings, symposia, masterclasses, and conferences like the Interdisciplinary Conference on Psychedelic Research (ICPR), focusing on high-quality scientific research, therapeutic innovations, and critical discussions around ethics, policy, and more.

    Joost also works as a postdoc at the Department of Psychiatry at the University Medical Center Groningen, conducting mixed-methods research examining the perspectives and lived experiences of patients and therapists involved in psychedelic treatments, therapeutic mechanisms, set and setting variables, adverse reactions to psychedelics and other contextual factors.

  • None to declare.

Prof. Gitte Moos Knudsen

Board Member

  • Gitte Moos Knudsen is a translational neurobiologist and clinical neurologist; her research aims to answer pertinent and basic questions regarding human brain disease mechanisms and predict brain responses to neuromodulatory interventions. For this purpose, her lab uses PET brain scanning to image brain receptors and receptor occupancy, and fMRI to evaluate drug effects on the brain hemodynamic response as well as the brains regional interactions, i.e., functional connectivity. Their precision medicine alliance BrainDrugs, of which Gitte is the Director, aims to identify which features can form a basis for decisions regarding the right treatment for the right patient with either major depressive disorder or epilepsy.

    Gitte is Professor in neurobiology, Chief neurologist, and Chair of the Neurobiology Research Unit at Copenhagen University Hospital Rigshospitalet. She is the past-president of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) and Chair of the ECNP thematic working group on psychedelics.

  • Gitte has within the last 3 years served as a consultant for Onsero, Gilgamesh, Pure, Pangea and Sanos, and as a speaker for Abbvie, Angelini and H. Lundbeck. She is PI of the strategic alliance BrainDrugs since 2019, based on a Lundbeck Foundation grant of 2.1 mio €.

Dr. Orla Galvin

Board Member

  • Dr. Orla Galvin came to patient advocacy with a PhD in Medicine and background in drug discovery and design in both academic and industry environments.  Transitioning to advocacy work at the umbrella patient organisation Retina International, Orla led high impact, multi-stakeholder socio-economic studies, patient preference studies, and accessibility studies across the globe assessing both rare and common conditions.

  • TBC