Prof. Dr. Matthias Berking is Head of the Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy at the Friedrich‑Alexander University Erlangen‑Nuremberg (FAU), Director of the Psychotherapy Outpatient Clinic and of the Training Center for Psychotherapists at the FAU. He is also author of numerous scientific articles and ranked in the top 0.01% of most‑cited researchers worldwide in Clinical Psychology according to the Stanford list in 2022, 2023, and 2024.

Nazanin Derakhshan is a Professor of Experimental Psychopathology and founder of the Centre for Building Resilience in Breast Cancer (BRiC) in the UK, where she leads groundbreaking research on emotional resilience in anxiety, depression, and cancer. Her work has highlighted the crucial role of attentional control in emotional vulnerability and has led to the development of effective neurocognitive interventions. As a breast cancer survivor, she is deeply committed to supporting women through psychoeducational resources and has been widely recognised for her impact, including being named a key transformational figure in Birkbeck Inspires. With over 100 publications and nearly 20,000 citations, Naz has made a significant contribution to psychological science and the integration of mental health care in oncology. She also advises charitable and governmental organisations, advocating for holistic, research-informed approaches to cancer care and psychological wellbeing.

Willem Kuykem is the Ritblat Professor of Mindfulness and Psychological Science at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom. His work focuses on preventing depression, promoting mental health, and flourishing across the lifespan. He has published more than 150 journal articles and was named by Web of Science as in the top 1% of the most cited scientists in the world in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.

He is the author of two books, Mindfulness for Life, (2024) and Mindfulness – Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Psychology (2019) with Christina Feldman; both published by Guilford Press. His work has been featured in the New York Times, New Scientist, Nature, Scientific American, Times Oprah Daily, Educational Supplement, the BBC, CBS, New Statesman, Le Monde, der Zeit, the Telegraph, the Guardian and numerous podcasts. He lives in London.

Dr. John Pachankis is the David R. Kessler Professor of Public Health, Psychiatry, and Psychology at Yale University. He is the founding director of Yale’s LGBTQ Mental Health Initiative, which is the US’s leading academic center devoted to the scientific study of LGBTQ people’s mental health. He has published 200+ scientific papers in the fields of clinical psychology, psychiatric epidemiology, and public health and he has been the principal investigator on several grants from the National Institutes of Health. This research has identified biopsychosocial mechanisms underlying LGBTQ people’s disproportionate risk of mental health problems, developed treatments to address these mechanisms, and studied the implementation of these treatments in community settings across the US and around the world. His research has received several awards from national organizations, has influenced policy and professional guidelines, and appears in international news outlets. In 2023, he was a Fulbright Fellow in the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. In 2024, he was a visiting professor at the Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law.

Bram Vervliet is professor at KU Leuven, Belgium, where he leads a translational research center on fear extinction. He is head of the master’s program of psychology at this faculty, and he serves as associate editor for the journal Behaviour Research and Therapy. He is author of more than 150 papers on fear and anxiety, but recently his focus shifted to the largely neglected role of poverty in anxiety and depression. He leads an interdisciplinary research network SCARCE that investigates how scarcity (“not having enough”) influences cognitive and affective processes that deepen the poverty trap and increase the risk of mental disorders. His mission is to raise general awareness about the devastating mental effects of poverty and to invite psychologists to join the global fight against poverty.

Joël Billieux is associate professor of clinical psychology, psychopathology, and psychological assessment at the university of Lausanne, and Co-director of the Cognitive and Affective Regulation Lab (CARLA), Institute of Psychology (IP), University of Lausanne (UNIL). He is also an associate researcher at Center for Excessive Gambling (Lausanne University Hospitals). In the past years, he has been head of the Addictive and Compulsive Behaviours Lab (ACB-Lab) at the University of Luxembourg (2017-2020), co-director of the Laboratory for Experimental Psychopathology (Université catholique de Louvain; 2012-2017), and co-director of the Internet and Gambling Disorders Clinic (Saint-Luc University Hospitals, Brussels; 2015-2017). He earned his PhD in Psychological Sciences and accomplished his postgraduate CBT training at the University of Geneva. His main area of research regards the psychological factors (cognitive, affective, motivational, interpersonal) involved in the etiology of addictive behaviors (with a particular focus on self-regulation-related processes), and the conceptualization and diagnosis of behavioral addictions. He also conducts research focusing on the effect of emerging technologies on human behavior, and on the therapeutic use of tabletop role-playing games.  He is a contributor of ICD-11 CDDR (Clinical descriptions and diagnostic requirements for ICD-11 mental, behavioural and neurodevelopmental disorders) section on “substance use disorder and addictive behaviors”, and an elected board member of International Society for the Study of Behavioural Addictions (ISSBA). He has published more than 390 peer-reviewed papers, several book chapters, and four books.

Cecilia A. Essau is Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the University of Roehampton, UK. She recently received the Distinguished Contributions Award from the British Psychological Society Developmental Psychology Section for sustained and substantial contributions to research, translating to an impact on wider society. Cecilia has developed a program (Super Skills for Life; SSL) which equips children and adolescents with skills to deal with situations that would have caused them anxiety and been challenging. By using a “train-the-trainer approach”, SSL training has built capacity and shaped the practice of 26,000 practitioners and has produced positive mental health outcomes in approximately one million young people in 23 countries.

Dr. Nikolaos Kazantzis is a Professor of Clinical Psychology with appointments at the Cognitive Behavior Therapy Research Unit (CBTRU; Melbourne, Australia) and the Beck Institute for Cognitive Behavior Therapy (Philadelphia, USA), and is widely recognized as a leading figure in CBT for advancing evidence-based approaches to tailoring the therapeutic relationship and, in particular, optimizing patients’ engagement with between-session therapeutic tasks. His team’s work—grounded in CBTRU conceptual models and measures—has secured multiple U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants and produced over 200 scholarly publications, six clinician books, and 19 journal special issues; in 2019, the American Psychological Association (APA) recognized the team with its Top Downloaded Paper Award for the most-downloaded article across all 89 APA journals, out of more than 4,500 articles. He is the immediate past Editor-in-Chief of Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, currently serves as editor of Springer Nature’s “CBT: Science into Practice” book series, and has received the Beck Scholar Award from Dr. Aaron T. Beck and Dr. Judith S. Beck in recognition of his scholarly contributions; additional information is available at www.nikolaoskazantzis.com, www.cbtru.com, and https://link.springer.com/series/15752/books.

Niki (Nicola) Petrocchi, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Psychology at John Cabot University in Rome and Founder and Director of Compassionate Mind Italia. She has published numerous scientific papers and book chapters, and authored a widely used manual on Compassion Focused Therapy. Her research and teaching focus on the psychophysiological bases of compassion and emotion regulation, with particular attention to the role of heart rate variability (HRV), integrating Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) . Dr. Petrocchi has played a key role in the dissemination of Compassion Focused Therapy in Italy, where the approach is now used in numerous mental health services within the public healthcare system and in several palliative care units. She has been actively involved in the international development of compassion-based approaches in psychotherapy, collaborating with clinicians and researchers across Europe and beyond. She regularly teaches and supervises mental health professionals and organizes trainings and retreats that integrate compassion, psychotherapy, and experiential practices. Her research interests include motivational systems in mental health, the psychophysiology of compassion, and the development of integrative approaches such as Compassion Focused EMDR, with a forthcoming book expected later this year. Her most recent work explores Compassion-Focused Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy, as well as the application of compassion-based approaches with gender-diverse populations.