Dr. Anne Bassett is a Canadian psychiatrist at the CAMH. She is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and holds the Dalglish Chair in 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome at the University of Toronto. She is Director of the Clinical Genetics Research Program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and Director of the Dalglish 22q Clinic at the Toronto General Hospital, the world’s first clinic for adults with 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome. Dr. Bassett is an internationally renowned expert in the genetics of complex developmental disorders, especially schizophrenia and serious congenital cardiac disease, as well as 22q11.2 deletion syndrome and other disorders associated with major structural changes in the human genome. Her work shows how translating relevant genetic findings into the clinic can help patients and their families.

Michael Gandal is an associate professor in the departments of Psychiatry and Genetics within the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the Lifespan Brain Institute at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). As a practicing psychiatrist, he specializes in the treatment of adolescents and adults with neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions, including autism, ADHD, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

Gandal directs a developmental neurogenomics research laboratory, which leverages large-scale genetic and genomic approaches to better understand the biological mechanisms contributing to — and novel treatment approaches for — developmental neuropsychiatric conditions. In 2020, he received the Theodore Reich Early Career Investigator of the Year Award from the International Society for Psychiatric Genetics.

Sébastien Jacquemont is a geneticist practicing at Ste-Justine Hospital. His research focuses on neuropsychiatric disorders of genetic origin. His team combines genetics, neuroimaging, biomarkers and the clinic to understand how genetic mutations lead to neuropsychiatric symptoms and intellectual disability in patients. Dr. Jacquemont and his team are actively studying structural genomic variants (deletions and duplications) associated with autism and schizophrenia. Specifically, they are investigating the effects of gene dosage on cognitive and behavioral symptoms, as well as endophenotypes such as neuroanatomy. They work with an international cohort of individuals carrying structural variants of chromosomes 16 and 22 (16p11.2 and 22q11.2).

Dr Elliott Rees is a Research Fellow at Cardiff University, where he has been investigating the genetic basis of psychiatric disorders since 2010. His research focuses on identifying rare mutations that contribute to schizophrenia, yielding new insights into the biological mechanisms underlying this disorder and showing genetic overlap with other psychiatric and developmental disorders. In 2020, he was awarded a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship to investigate the combined effects of rare and common genetic variants in schizophrenia. Elliott is committed to embedding EDI and open-science principles into his team and holds several roles at Cardiff University that promote and establish a supportive research environment.

Dr Jai Shah is Associate Director of the Prevention and Early Intervention Program for Psychosis (PEPP) and an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at McGill University, both in Montreal, Canada. As a psychiatrist and researcher, Dr Jai Shah has been deeply involved in and committed to early intervention efforts, initially in psychosis and now across youth mental health. Along with PEPP, his current contributions are as PI leading economic evaluations in the pan-Canadian project ACCESS Open Minds, McGill Site PI for the NIMH-funded Psychosis Risk Outcomes Network (ProNET); and a 5 year CIHR grant regarding data and youth mental health services evaluation.

Brett Trost received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Saskatchewan and is currently a Research Associate in Dr. Stephen Scherer’s lab at The Hospital for Sick Children. He is interested in developing and applying computational biology techniques to improve our understanding of the genetic basis of human health, in particular neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions. Dr. Trost’s most recent publications have focused on understanding the genomic architecture of autism, including the role of tandem repeat expansions. In recognition of this work, he was recently awarded the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics Richard Todd Award.

Jacob Vorstman trained in both child and adolescent psychiatry and molecular genetics. He completed most of his training in the Netherlands (UMC Utrecht). In September 2017 he moved to Toronto, where he is associate professor psychiatry at The Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto, and holder of the endowed SickKids Psychiatry Associates Chair in Developmental Psychopathology.

Initially, his research focused on the psychiatric and genetic aspects of the 22q11.2 deletion. He the broadened the scope of his research to the study of genotype-phenotype relations in neurodevelopmental disorders, in particular autism, intellectual disability and schizophrenia.

His ambition is to further insights into the genetic architecture underlying these disorders as well as to improve methods to measure the associated phenotypes. Dr Vorstman is the director of the Autism Research Unit at the Hospital for Sick Children; together with his team he initiated a multidisciplinary clinic called DAGSY (Developmental Assessment of Genetically Susceptible Youth), designated for children with genetic risk variants associated with a psychiatric or neurodevelopmental outcomes.