During the DGPPN conference in Berlin this year, Prof. Ute Habel, speaker of the IRTG, RWTH Aachen University and Prof. Ted Abel, member of the IRTG managing board, University of Pennsylvania, gave overviews on the german and american perspective on the work of the IRTG 1328 over the past five years.

The IRTG symposium was organized on the DGPPN conference, which is the largest conference in its field in Europe. This year over 9000 participants enjoyed the rich scientific and clinical program.

The talks of Prof. Habel and Prof. Abel can be downloaded from this website.

slides Prof. Ute Habel

slides Prof. Ted Abel

Dr. Janina Seubert, alumni of the IRTG under supervision of Ute Habel and Ruben Gur received a research stipend from the German Research Foundation (DFG). During her time in the IRTG she studied olfactory-cognitive interactions in schizophrenia.
Janina Seubert will work on the topic of the neurobiology of affective judgement in schizophrenia patients by using olfactory stimulation. The research stipend covers a 24 month stay at the labs of Bruce Turetsky, University of Pennsylvania and Johan Lundström, Monell Chemical Senses Center.

As in the previous years, the IRTG 1328 offers funded research internships for undergraduate students in the summer of 2012. Three projects of PhD students from the IRTG are offered to US undergraduates, who will conduct their own experiments from planning to publication under supervision of IRTG student supervisors and professors.

The research internships are offered within the framework of RISE (Research Internships in Science and Engineering), offered by the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, DAAD), and Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme (UROP), offered by the RWTH Aachen University.

Both programs have databases in which US undergraduates can search for interesting projects. We are looking forward to many excellent applicants and are eager to offer US undergraduates an exciting research experience.

For his work on the neural correlates of gender differences in humor appreciation Nils Kohn received the Wilhelm-Exner-Price for Psychology 2011.

The price, which is awarded anually by the Österreichische Gewerbeverband (ÖGV), is meant to support young scientists in their research on topics in clinical and health psychology. The ceremony took place in the Palais Eschenbach in Vienna on the 28th of November.

Nils Kohn received a gender stipend of the RWTH Third Line Excellence Initiative of the DFG: Future Concept, Mobilizing People Measure and is now a post-doctoral fellow in the IRTG 1328

Dr. Katharina Saß received the research award of the German Association for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (DGPPN) during the 2011 conference in Berlin. Dr. Saß is a postdoctoral fellow within the IRTG 1328. Her research focuses on neurobiological bases of speach and knowledge representation in different psychiatric diseases.

Dr. Katharina Saß aims to apply the price money to the developement of new methods to investigate the neural correlates of speach and semantic procession.

The research award "Imaging in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy" is awarded anually during the DGPPN conference and is endowed with a price money of 25000€. The 2011 award was also granted to Dr. Martin Walter, Otto-von-Guericke-Universität, Magdeburg.