Candidates for Executive Committee

At the ENS Business Meeting, which will be held in Lisbon on 31 May 2011, 11.15-12.15 h, two new members of the ENS Executive Committee will be elected. The 6 candidates are the following:

• Roger Barker
  
• Bastiaan Bloem
  
• Marianne Dieterich
  
• Sokratis Papageorgiou
  
• Maria Rocca
• Ana Verdelho

		Roger Barker

Dr Roger A. Barker is a University Reader in Clinical Neuroscience and Honorary Consultant in Neurology at the Addenbrooke’s Hospital.  He trained at Oxford and London and has been in his current position for ten years having completed an MRC Clinician Scientist Fellowship just prior to this.  His main interests are in the neurodegenerative disorders of the nervous system in particular Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease.  He combines basic research looking at cell therapies to treat these conditions with clinically based work on defining the natural history and heterogeneity of both Huntington’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. He is a member of the CURE PD Research Advisory Panel, the MRC Stem cell Liaison Committee and is co-editor in chief of the journals ACNR and the Journal of Neurology.

		Bastiaan Bloem

Professor Bas Bloem is a consultant neurologist at the Department of Neurology, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, the Netherlands. He received his M.D. degree (with honour) at Leiden University Medical Centre in 1993. In 1994, he obtained his PhD degree in Leiden, based on a thesis entitled “Postural reflexes in Parkinson’s disease”. He was trained as a neurologist between 1994 and 2000, also at Leiden University Medical Centre. He received additional training as a movement disorders specialist during fellowships at ‘The Parkinson's Institute’, Sunneyvale, California (with Dr. J.W. Langston), and at the Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London (with Prof. N.P. Quinn and Prof. J.C. Rothwell). In 2002, he founded and became Medical Director of the Parkinson Centre Nijmegen (ParC), which was recognised from 2005 onwards as centre of excellence for Parkinson’s disease. Together with Dr. Marten Munneke, he also developed ParkinsonNet, an innovative healthcare concept that now consists of 64 professional networks for Parkinson patients covering all of the Netherlands (www.parkinsonnet.nl). In September 2008, he was appointed as Professor of Neurology, with movement disorders as special area of interest. He is currently President of the International Society for Gait and Postural Research, and is on the editorial board for several national and international journals. Since 2009, he is member of the European Section Executive Committee of the Movement Disorder Society. In 2009, he also joined the board of ZonMw (The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development). He currently has two main research interests: cerebral compensatory mechanisms, especially in the field of gait & balance; and healthcare innovation, aiming to develop and scientifically evaluate patient-centred collaborative care. For this latter purpose, Prof. Bloem co-founded MijnZorgnet (together with Prof. Jan Kremer), a service provider that delivers web-based communities for both patients and health professionals. Prof. Bloem has published over 300 publications, including more than 230 peer-reviewed international papers.

Websites:

• http://www.umcn.nl/Research/Departments/neurology/Pages/
  NeurologicalMovementDisorders.aspx
• www.parkinsonnet.nl

		Marianne Dieterich

Research Fields

• Analysis of peripheral and central vestibular disorders in humans
• Psychophysical, neurophysiological examinations in combination with activation studies in PET and functional MRI
• Cortical interaction between different sensory systems (visual, vestibular, acoustic, somatosensory, nociceptive)
• Somatoform vertigo syndromes. Primary and secondary after a vestibular dysfunction

Bibliography:
Journal articles: 220 
Book chapters etc.: 126
Cited abstracts: 230
Books: 3

		Sokratis Papageorgiou

Sokratis G. Papageorgiou is a neurologist and Assistant Professor of Neurology at the Department of Neurology, University of Athens Medical School.
From 1981 to 1987, he studied medicine at the Medical School of the University of Athens. From 1988 to 1992, he completed his residency training program in neurology at the Pitié-Salpêtrière University Hospital, in Paris, with a scholarship from the Collège de Médicine des Hôpitaux de Paris. He obtained a MSc degree in Neuropsychology from the University of Claude-Bernard at Lyon, at 1993. From 1992 to 1994 he worked as a fellow in clinical research at the Research Hospital “Frédéric Joliot” of the Commissariat a l’Énergie Atomique of France, at Orsay, doing imaging studies with PET in patients with epilepsy and dementia. On January 1995, he presented his PhD thesis at the University of Athens, on the memory deficits of epileptic patients with mesio-temporal sclerosis. He worked from 1996 to 2003 in the Neurology department of Athens General Hospital, where while working in general neurology, he set up a Memory Outpatient Clinic. In 2003 he became a Lecturer in Neurology at the University of Athens and set up the in-patient Cognitive Neurology-Movement Disorders unit of the Department of Neurology, at Eginition Hospital, in Athens. Since 2009 he is Assistant Professor of Neurology and in charge of the Cognitive Neurology-Extrapyramidal Disorders in-patient and out-patient unit of the above hospital. His research interests and publications include the cognitive and behavioural aspects of the various dementing diseases as well as the characterization of atypical, early-onset and rapidly progresssive cases. He is a co-founder and member of the executive committee of the post-graduate training program in Clinical Neuropsychology, organized jointly by the University of Athens Medical School and the University of Texas Health Sciences Center. He is a member of the Greek Neurological Society, the European Federation of Neurological Societies, the European Neurological Society and the American Academy of Neurology. He serves as a reviewer in many neurological journals. In June 2010 he has been elected Executive Secretary of the Athens Medical Society.

		Maria Rocca

Maria A. Rocca was born in Lecco on 08/03/1971, took her Graduation in Medicine in 1996 and her Post-Degree Graduation in Neurology in 2002. Dr. Rocca is currently Head of the “Neuroimaging of CNS White Matter Unit”. Dr. Rocca’s activity is mainly focused on the application of structural and functional MR-based techniques to improve the understanding of central nervous system function in healthy individuals and diseased people, particularly patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and other white matter disorders. Dr. Rocca is currently conducting several projects, based on the use of diffusion tensor MRI and voxel-based morphometry to define the contribution of damage of selected CNS structures in determining clinical disability an cognitive impairment in various neurological conditions. She is also extensively applying fMRI and advanced methods of analysis (e.g., functional and effective connectivity) in an attempt to improve the understanding of the role of cortical plasticity in the different phases of MS, and the influence of treatments (i.e., pharmacological and rehabilitative) on functional cortical reorganization. This effort should lead to the identification of new therapeutic avenues for MS as well as other WM conditions.   
She is member of various Scientific Societies and, in some of them, she covered or is covering institutional roles (European Community Network for the application of MRI in MS [MAGNIMS], ENS Neuroimaging Subcommittee; Neuroimaging Study Group of the Italian Neurological Society; Member of the Annual Meeting Program Committee [AMPC] of the ISMRM). She is also reviewer of several international scientific journals. 
She is author or co-author of more than 215 scientific papers published on peer-reviewed journals and of 32 book chapters. Due to her scientific activaty she participated, as a speaker or invited speaker, to more than 150 international congresses or scientific symposia, and she received several national and international Awards.
Dr. Rocca is Non-Tenured Professor of Clinical Neurology, Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Milan.

		Ana Verdelho Department of Neurosciences. Santa Maria Hospital. University of Lisbon. Portugal.

Born in 1969.

Completed Medical School in 1993 (University of Lisbon)

Neurologist in the Neurosciences Department of Santa Maria Hospital (Lisbon) and in the Neurology Department of Hospital da Luz (Lisbon).

Responsible for the dementia outpatient clinic of the Neurosciences Department of Santa Maria Hospital (Lisbon).

Neurologist consultant in Hospital do Mar, Lisbon (Dementia Unit with 24 beds), were she is responsible for the Dementia Unit.

PhD student (Medical School of the University of Lisbon) in the field of cognitive complaints and functional impairment related with cerebral white matter changes

Member of the European Neurological Society

Member of the Subcommittee of Behavioural and cognitive neurology and dementia of the European Neurological Society

Member of the Subcommittee of Higher cortical functions of the European Neurological Society

Member of the Scientific Committee of the European Stroke Conference

Fields of interest: dementia and cognitive decline, cerebral white matter disease, ageing