Cardiff-Maastricht International Mental Health Research Partnership

Inaugural Meeting

Date: Tuesday February 20th, 2024: 9am- 6 pm
Venue: Van der Valk Hotel; Nijverheidsweg 25; 6227 AL Maastricht. Phone: +3143 387 3500
 

This is the inaugural meeting of the Cardiff-Maastricht University International Partnership in Mental Health research. The partnership aims to build on the common research direction, but complementary expertise of Cardiff's Neuroscience and Mental Health Innovation Institute (NMHII) and Maastricht's Mental Health and Neuroscience Institute (MHeNs). At this initial meeting, we propose to focus on 3 research activities with the aim of increasing collaborative research activity and seeking joint funding

1. Data collaboration: MINDDS-connect is a federated data collaboration platform developed within a research consortium that includes Cardiff, Maastricht, and colleagues in KU Leuven. A near term objective is to seek funding to develop this further

2. Neurodevelopment, environment, and functional genomics: Maastricht has long-standing expertise in the functional genomic analysis across a broad range biology and including environmental influences, such as toxins and dietary molecules in other areas of biology. When combined with the partnership’s overall expertise in neuronal stem cell biology, translational neuroscience and psychiatric genomics, there is a strong potential to pursue a new area of study.

3. PhD programme in translational neuroscience: Within the partnership a combination of recent technical developments for the study of neuroscience and computational biology, world leading psychiatric genetics and genomics and the opportunity to create patient meta-cohorts, the partnership has the capacity to create a unique PhD programme at the interface between mental health patient studies, data science and biological analysis. The next generation of researchers need to develop an understanding and skills across the interface of these three disciplines.

This will be a closed meeting (by invitation only) and focus on building a consensus around these themes and potential fundable outcomes.

Best regards,
Professor David Linden and Professor Adrian Harwood