ECR Workshop 2025

Golam Khandaker is Professor of Psychiatry and Immunology at Bristol Medical School, Head of Immunopsychiatry Programme at the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit, and Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at the Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust. 

Golam's research focuses on identifying and validating novel immunological mechanisms and potential treatment targets for major psychiatric disorders particularly depression and schizophrenia using epidemiological cohort and genetic analyses applied to large-scale population-based cohort/biobank, genomic, proteomic data, and early-phase clinical trials of immunomodulatory drugs in people with depression and psychosis. 

Xueyi Shen is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Her research mainly involves leveraging multi-omic data to understand major psychiatric conditions, to unveil the mode of action of medications, and to identify risk and protective environmental factors that could influence psychiatric symptoms. 

She leads large-scale, international consortium studies in the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium and the ENIGMA consortium. She is a member of the steering committee of the Association for Complex Trait Genetics in Scotland, an editorial board member of Scientific Reports, and a member of the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics.

Ruta Margelyte is a Senior Research Associate at the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit at the University of Bristol, working with the Immunopsychiatry group. 

She specialises in medical statistics, epidemiology, and population proteomics with a focus on mental health outcomes. Ruta applies advanced statistical methods in large cohort studies, integrating proteomic and phenotypic data to identify biomarkers and investigate biological pathways involved in psychiatric conditions.

Christina Dardani is a Senior Researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, and Honorary Senior Research Associate at the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit at the University of Bristol. 

She specialises in mental health classical and genetic epidemiology. Christina applies genetic causal inference methods to large-scale population-based and multi-omics data (mainly genomic and proteomic) to interrogate possible causal mechanisms and novel drug targets for major neuropsychiatric conditions, and shared mechanisms for comorbid physical and psychiatric conditions.

Together with supporters and a global network of scientists, MQ works to create a world where mental illness is understood, effectively treated and ultimately prevented.

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