The Board of IDIVAL at the meeting on 23rd June has appointed Professor Benedicto Crespo Facorro Scientific Director of IDIVAL. The appointment had already been announced a few weeks ago and in this way compliance with the statutes of IDIVAL where is made explicit the role of this figure in the Institute as the highest representative and spokesman in scientific matters and responsible for directing, planning and leading the scientific policy of IDIVAL.
Benedicto Crespo Facorro is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Cantabria and Head of Psychiatry Section at the University Hospital Marqués de Valdecilla (Santander, Cantabria). Principal Investigator of the Psychiatry Group at IDIVAL and responsible for the area of schizophrenia and Group G26 at CIBERSAM.
Doctor of Psychiatry at the Complutense University, he completed his postdoctoral fellowship in schizophrenia research at the University of Iowa. He is a member of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Cantabria.
Director of the care and research program for early stages of psychosis in Cantabria (PAFIP), his research interests encompass different lines of knowledge of schizophrenia; seeking to integrate the results emanated from clinical research, neuroimaging, genetics and basic research in people with a first episode of psychosis. Member of the editorial committee of various European, Asian and American magazines. Principal investigator of projects of the National Plan since 2001 and collaborator researcher of FP7 European projects.
He has received several awards and scientific awards: Annual Young Investigator Award from the American Neuropsychiatric Association (ANPA, 1997), Young Researcher Award of the International Congress on Schizophrenia Research (ICOSR, 2001), Reference Researcher in Psychiatry Award from Spanish Society of Psychiatry (SEPB, 2006), Bank of Sabadell “National Award for Research in Biomedicine” (2007), Best Scientific Article Valdecilla-Caja Cantabria 2013 and 2014. In the period 2000-2015, its group has published more than 180 scientific articles with Publications in leading journals of Psychiatry and Medicine such as: Nature, Nature Genetics, Nature Neuroscience, American Journal of Psychiatry, Molecular Psychiatry and has developed or directed about 20 doctoral theses. Benedict has an index h 41.
