John F. Cryan is Professor & Chair, Dept. of Anatomy & Neuroscience, University College Cork and was appointed Vice President for Research & Innovation in 2021. He is also a Principal Investigator in the APC Microbiome Ireland Institute. His research is focused on the neurobiology of stress related disorders and the mechanisms underlying microbiome-brain interactions across the lifespan. Prof. Cryan has published over 650 peer-reviewed articles and has a H-index of 157 (Google Scholar). He is a Senior Editor of Neuropharmacology and of Neurobiology of Stress and is on the editorial board of a further 10 journals. He has co-edited four books and is co-author of the bestselling “The Psychobiotic Revolution: Mood, Food, and the New Science of the Gut-Brain Connection” (National Geographic Press, 2017). He has received numerous awards including from European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP), European Behavioural Pharmacology Society, British Association of Pharmacology, Physiological Society, American Gastroenterology Association and Neuroscience Ireland. He received the University of Utrecht Award for Excellence in Pharmaceutical Research in 2013, UCC Research Communicator of the Year 2017, and was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Antwerp, Belgium in 2018. He received the Datta Prize from FASEB in 2022 and has been on the Highly Cited Researcher list in 2014 and from 2017 to the present. He was elected a Member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2017. He was a TEDMED speaker in 2014, TEDx Speaker in 2017 and is a Past-President of the European Behavioural Pharmacology Society. He was a Member of the 2022 Fens Forum Programme Committee and Chairs the Scientific Programme Committee of ECNP for 2022-2024.