We congratulate Dr. Léon Franzen on his recent success in being selected as awardee of the junior scientist grant 2024 by the medical faculty of the University of Lübeck.
His project entitled “Tailoring early detection, intervention, and prediction of mental disorders to adolescents after preterm birth” will receive substantial financial support for a period of two-years (2024-2025). The project’s goal is to design, implement, and validate a set of tests that will be specifically tailored to adolescents who were born prematurely. This battery of tests will fuse the biophysical screening of specific skills from perceptual and occupational science with information on mental health among other aspects in these individuals who have been followed since their preterm birth.
This innovative project stands out through its interdisciplinary nature, as it combines psychiatry (Dr. Léon Franzen & Prof. Stefan Borgwardt), neonatology (Prof. Göpel), psychology (Prof. Obleser), and health sciences (Prof. Röse) at the interdisciplinary campus in Lübeck – where the university and university hospital’s interwoven infrastructure lends itself perfectly for conducting such interdisciplinary projects. This grant is a fantastic signal from the committee highlighting the value of an interdisciplinary approach to precision psychiatry for the early detection and intervention of mental disorders.
If you are interested in the project, please contact Dr. Léon Franzen directly via email. Also, interested students are encouraged to keep their eyes open for a couple of related positions that the Translational Psychiatry Lab will advertise in the coming weeks.
We would like to take the opportunity to congratulate Dr. Franzen once again and are looking forward to sharing more updates on the progress of his research programme in the future.