The Executive Board of Radboud university medical center has awarded the Valkhof Chair 2015 to Professor Carmen Sandi.

Professor Carmen Sandi is Director of the Brain Mind Institute, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. After completing her PhD at the Cajal Institute, Madrid, she continued her scientific career at the University of Bordeaux, INSERM, France, and the Open University, UK.

She was appointed Professor in Madrid where she directed the Laboratory for Stress and Memory and after a sabbatical stay at the University of Bern, she joined the EPFL in Lausanne, in 2003.

About her work 
Her work has been pioneering in identifying the neurobiological mechanisms whereby stress affects memory and psychopathology. Her research group is currently combining approaches in rodents and humans to understand how stress affects
the social brain and the emergence of violence, including the factors that de?ne individual differences in resilience and vulnerability to stress. She has been the coordinator of the EU Consortium MemStick and the president of the European
Brain and Behavior Society (till 2012). Carmen Sandi has published over 150 research articles in major international journals and contributed to various books. She has received several awards, including the EBBS-Elsevier Behavioral Brain Research Prize.

She has served in several international boards, including the FENS governing council, and has organized several major Conferences on ‘stress, brain and behavior’ and violence. She is member of the European Research Council grant panel for Neuroscience and Neural Disorders and holds several editorial commitments, including being Chief Editor of the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.

The Department of Cognitive Neuroscience will o?cially host Professor Carmen Sandi during her visit of the Radboudumc.

Professor Sandi will deliver this year’s Valkhof Lecture, entitled:
The stressed social brain: from rodents to humans