ADVISORY BOARD
The members of the Scientific Advisory Board work for the Foundation on an honorary basis.
Prof. Dr. Eva Hoch
Scientific & Managing Director, IFT Institut für Therapieforschung;
Leitung der Forschungsgruppe Cannabis, Klinik für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
Professor Dr. Eva Hoch is a clinical psychologist. She has been working as a researcher in the field of substande use and substance use disorders for over 25 years. She is scientific and administrative director of the IFT Institute for Therapy Research and head of the cannabinoid research group at the Department of Psychiatry at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich. She teaches as a professor at Charlotte Fresenius University, Munich. She is particularly interested in the health effects of cannabinoids on the human body, especially on the psyche. She is involved in a large international research network and advises the World Health Organisation, the European Drugs Agency, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the German Federal Government and other authorities. Prof. Dr. Hoch is also trained as a psychotherapist and supervisor. She is acting president of the German Society for Addiction Research and Therapy. She has been honoured with various research awards for her work.
Prof. Dr. Christoph Stein
Director Experimental Anaesthesiology,
Charité Campus Benjamin Franklin, Hindenburgdamm 30,
D-12200 Berlin, Germany
Christoph Stein (orcid.org/0000-0001-5240-6836) studied Medicine at Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) München, Germany, and received training in Anaesthesiology, Pain Management and Neuropharmacology at State University of New York, University of California Los Angeles, LMU and Max-Planck Institute for Psychiatry (München, Germany). He then accepted a faculty position at Johns Hopkins Hospital and established a research group at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (Baltimore, USA). In 1997 he assumed the Chair of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine at Freie Universität Berlin (since 2003: Charité Campus Benjamin Franklin) and started an interdisciplinary research laboratory consisting of basic researchers and clinicians. His work has focused on mechanisms of opioid actions outside the central nervous system with the aim to avoid adverse effects such as addiction or respiratory depression. In collaboration with Mathematics at the Zuse Institute Berlin, his group recently developed an artificial intelligence-based design for non-addictive opioid painkillers. He has published over 250 peer-reviewed articles and received several awards, most notably by the US National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Drug Abuse, the International Anesthesia Research Society, the European Pain Federation, and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
Prof. Dr. Rainer Spanagel
Scientific Director of the Institute of Psychopharmacology
Central Institute of Mental Health
Mannheim, Germany
Rainer Spanagel studied biology at the universities of Tübingen and Munich and continued his training in behavioral pharmacology and neurochemistry at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) in Martinsried. In 1990, he moved to the MPI of Psychiatry in Munich, became head of the addiction research group and habilitated in pharmacology and toxicology. In 2000, he moved to the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, a leading European institution for biological psychiatry, to become scientific director of the Institute of Psychopharmacology. Professor Spanagel has received numerous scientific awards, notably the Sir Hans Krebs Award for his pioneering gene x environment studies in rodents, the James B. Isaacson Award for his continuing achievements in alcohol research, and the Reinhardt Koselleck Award for Innovation in Neuroscience. He has published more than 300 articles, is editor-in-chief of the international journal Addiction Biology, and coordinates national activities on electronic addiction medicine.
