transCampus©
The flagship of our international collaborations is the transCampus® initiative – the first of its kind in Europe – a university partnership between TU Dresden and King's College London (KCL). For the first time two leading universities have formed a transnational campus with joint professorships and deans, joint PhD and MD programs, joint administrative and lab structures, and complementary translational and accelerator projects.
The transCampus® network on Mental Health builds a unique partnership between the Centre for Mental Health and the Faculty of Psychology at the TUD and the Centre for Affective Disorders at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at KCL. The Centre for Mental Healthand the Faculty of Psychology at the TUD offer a state-of-the-art research infrastructure for research in psychiatry and cognitive-affective neuroscience and maintains numerous interdisciplinary collaborations with leading research institutions worldwide. KCL’s IoPPN is a top-ranking world-leading centre of mental health research (second after Harvard and leading in Europe) that promotes cutting edge collaborative research within an interdisciplinary context. The conditions and disorders under investigation impact people at every stage in life, with a particular emphasis on neurodevelopmental disorders in childhood and adolescence followed through to adult mental ill-health. Insights from discovery science (including neuroscience, genomics, social science and psychology) are translated to diagnostics and interventions to improve patient care and quality of life. IoPPN’s research facilities have secured positions at the forefront of international scientific research and make major contributions to teaching, training, and research by inspiring and nurturing the next generation of scientific leaders. Within the transCampus® network on Mental Health we examine risk factors and pathomechanisms of mental disorders to improve early identification, understanding and treatment. M. Bauer and A.H. Young have collaborated on a variety of projects in the domain of affective disorders and lithium treatment largely under the auspices of international societies (International Society for Bipolar Disorders, ISBD; International Group for the Study of Lithium-treated patients, IGSLi). More recently shared seed funding for the examination of on mental disorders in families (C. Pariante, S. Knappe, J. Martini) and a shared seed grant for the investigation of neural mechanisms during the treatment of bipolar depression with esketamine was raised (A.H. Young, P. Ritter). V. Roessner and K. Rubia have collaborated on neuroimaging projects in ADHD. The transCampus® initiative provides an established joint PhD program for exchange and joint supervision of PhD students, building on the long-term research cooperation of TUD and KCL/IoPPN.